Even though we’re a pretty standard 9-6 business in a lot of ways, in a lot of other ways, we’re not.  Our work involves routine processes and daily tasks, but we are also a creative firm – and creative work sometimes doesn’t happen on schedules.

So we’ve been pondering for a long time whether some periodic changes in our work-week schedules might be a good idea.  And we’ve decided to give it a try.

For the time-being (meaning, we don’t know for exactly how long we will implement this change), we are closed to the outside world on Fridays.  We are doing a few different things with this time.  Some of our team will be working 4-day weeks for a while, and some of us will be here on Fridays – either working intently on client services, or… surprise, surprise… working intently on our own projects.  (pique your interest?).

Of course if there is ever anything urgent, you can always reach us at support [at] jloop [dot] com.

We’ll keep you posted on how this new schedule affects our productivity and our creative output.  We’re interested to find out ourselves!

Many of you probably know we’ve been working on a streamlined event utility called DoWeHaveEnough.  Its a very simple little application that helps you plan the type of event that can only happen if you have enough participants.  Things like… a poker game… a golf foursome… a basketball game.  Stuff like that.

We’ll we’ve been hard at work developing a companion iPhone app that integrates with the web application.  And we just found out that we’re a FINALIST to win something called the Appsfire App Star Awards!  These awards are for showcasing brilliant upcoming apps (not yet released).

The winners are announced next week at the LeWeb conference in Paris.  Please visit our page and rate us with a thumbs up to help us!

Here’s the demo video we produced to enter the contest:

And if you would like to be notified by email when the app hits the iTunes App Store, you can sign up today at http://dowehaveenough.com.

Give the app a try and let us know what you think!

IE6 has got to go.  We are now two significant versions beyond IE6 and the lengths to which we must go to support IE6 have gotten to be too much.  Very encouraged by this news today that YouTube is probably considering dumping IE6 support in an upcoming release.  That should be the death knell.

Here at JLOOP we’ve dropped default support for IE6 in new projects and encourage our clients to use an “alert bar” that detects IE6 and shows a message to suggest that the user upgrade to a newer browser.  We truly believe this is a reasonable step.  With the coming of HTML5 and many new technologies, support for IE6 is going to get even more costly.  We want to do our part to kick it while its down.

Please join us!

SUBJECT: URGENT –dispute of internet intellectual property safeguard
(If you are NOT CEO,please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent.Thanks.)

Dear CEO,

We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on April 21, 2009, One Japan company called “Path soft investment Corp” are applying for “jloop”as their China(.cn)/Asia(.asia)/India(.in)/HK(.hk)/TW(.tw)/Mobi(.mobi) etc. domain names, and the internet brand name.

After our initial checking, we found the internet brand name and these domain names being applied are as same as your company’s, so we need to get the confirmation from your company. If the aforesaid company is your business partner or your subsidiary company, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you have no any relationship with this company, please contact us within 10 workdays. If out of the deadline, we will approve the application  submitted by “Path soft investment Corp” unconditionally.

We would like to get the affirmation of your company,please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Kevin Wu
Senior Director
TEL: +86 21 69929440
Fax:  +86 21 69929447
Website:www.qepeng.org.cn
Address:Room 902,8th,nong 1518,Jinyuan 1st Road,Jiading District, Shanghai city.

Today I responded to Mr. Kevin Wu with this reply:

Mr. Wu -

Thank you so much for your mails.  It is quite a coincidence that you have received this requesting from “Path soft investment Corp” because just today our company received formally applications from one Canada company called “Soft path investment Corp”.  This company are applying for “qepeng” as their USA(.com)/Canada(.canada)/Mumbai(.mmb)/Fantasyisland(.fntsy) etc. domain names and the internet brand name.  Isn’t that crazy?  What a strange world it is indeedish, isn’t it?

We are sure you would like to own these domain names, so please respond within 4 days and we will also send you a complimentary (refurbished) Clapper for turning lights on/off in your workplace (simply by clapping!).  If you do not reply in these deadline we will approve purchase of domains submitted by “Soft path investment Corp” and you will lose rights to soft plushies bearing your company Brand names.

Please reply by mails.

Sincerely,

Jay Dysart
CEO (imagine that!)
JLOOP Rich Media (can you check on the domain names for me?)
Website: www.dontmakemeunfriendyou.com

Do you imagine I’ll get a response?

And for good measure, pool standing as of 5:15 pm on friday

http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/03/02/does-ab-testing-lead-to-crappy-products/

Mario first worked with us at JLOOP as a freelance designer in 2006 and joined us as a full-time designer in November of that year.  He was our lead designer through August of 2007 when he left to work for Sapient.

From the very beginning we could tell that Mario was an artist with deep convictions and a great passion for design.  In our first meetings – when we talked about working on a few logo sketches and items for a client’s site (that he would later entirely design for us) Mario was soft-spoken.  He asked probing questions and took great interest in discovering the essence of the company and the vision for the project.  He seemed to be a great fit for the way that we approach our design work at JLOOP.

Our first impressions were very accurate.  And although he did not always remain soft-spoken (he fought hard for the things he believed in) Mario revealed himself to be an artist of the highest integrity and a designer with an exquisitely beautiful eye.  His attention to detail was unrivaled and he brought the design-threshold of our growing company to a new level during his stay with us.

I often used to joke with Mario that I had to be careful what notes I gave him because the slightest change to a layout just might cause him to have to stay up all night in a redesign.  Not for the client – not for me – but for him.  It always had to be perfect to his eye.  Even though the request might just be to extend a line a few pixels or darken a color a bit – Mario could see the impact on the entirety of the design and he would spend hours (literally hours) adjusting the rest of the elements to match (and god forbid if the change gave him a new idea – that could take days to play out).  He was passionate about the interplay of design elements – believed in a healthy respect for the formal structures of design (like grids and columns) – loved typography – and was always ready for a challenge.

One of the biggest projects that Mario worked on while he was at JLOOP was EarthFolio.  EarthFolio was a challenging project from many angles and we had been working on it closely for quite a while.  It wasn’t until Mario got involved artistically that the project really started to fly.  He brought together the challenging architectural needs of the site with a gorgeous yet simple design.  He worked many long hours directly with our client as well as collaborating heavily with JLOOPers Tim Henager and Jim Carter to build a very complicated Flash site.  We all wanted desperately for the project to be a success and Mario literally lived it – for months.

Another of Mario’s major projects at JLOOP was the rebranding and website design of MHP (formerly Myers Houghton and Partners).  So lets see… financial services and structural engineering… not exactly the sexiest projects – but Mario tackled them with the right mix of elegance, formality and ingenuity.  Beautiful work.

Some of Mario’s other projects with us include the initial concepts and design direction of sites such as conduitdevelopment.com, cityonahillproductions.com, and primalalchemy.com.  Its not hard to see his immense talent.

It was a privilege to have Mario as a part of our team at JLOOP.  We don’t think of our company as just a place to work.  We are a bit of a family here at JLOOP.  We lift each other up and we celebrate each others’ talents.  We work hard and we share in the passion of that work.  But we also have lives.  We care about each other and we have been immensely fortunate to have been blessed with amazing people as a part of our JLOOP family throughout our 8 years of doing this work.  All told there have been 19 employees at JLOOP and each and every one has been special to us.  Mario is a unique and integral piece of the puzzle that makes up what JLOOP is today.  We are better for having had him with us.  We have forever been touched by his spirit – as people, as friends, as co-workers, as artists, and as people striving to do good.

Mario and I had our share of late night talks after long days of work.  We shared conversation about life’s struggles.  To me, it seemed Mario approached his life in the same way he approached his design – in constant search of balance, with a healthy respect for structure, and a hopeful pursuit of harmony – all wound together by a deep and resonating passion.  He told me many times that he “just wanted to do great work”.  And by great, Mario really meant great (underlined and capitalized).  I know his decision to leave JLOOP wasn’t an easy one.  He was living a life full of many transitions at that time and I respected the fact that his life journey seemed to be calling on him to make this move.  From our team of 8 at JLOOP to a massive crew at Sapient – not a transition to take lightly.  He knew it, and I knew it, and we were at peace in knowing that Mario was reaching for a different rung.

I am shaken.  Shaken by the loss of a friend.  Shaken by such a great talent being taken from us in what should have been his brightest hour.  I am thankful for the time Mario was with us – by the legacy he leaves behind at JLOOP.  I am strengthened by the desire to do great work – as Mario would have us do.

All of us at JLOOP send our heartfelt condolences to the Puig family.  We especially pray for Mario’s children – Cristiane and Oliver.

Farewell sweet Mario.

Google Dependent
I want to be an artist.
How to draw.
Need a way to get my art to people.
How to make a website.
Okay, I got a career, now to meet someone.
How to lose weight.
First date tonight!
How to tie a tie.
Date went well, I think I like her.
How to kiss.
I think I’m in love. We wants kids.
How to get pregnant.
Starving artist and kids don’t work well together…
How to make money.
Get a job?
How to write a resume.
My first Thanksgiving with the family!
How to cook a turkey.
I want to be an artist.
How to lose friends and alienate people.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows-flash-killer-sproutcore/

http://mashable.com/2008/07/01/google-adobe-flash-search/

The Cure for Content-Delay Syndrome

Favorite Quote…

It’s a disrespected line item in a schedule: “final content delivered.” It’s the perennial cause of delay and the stuff of myth (I once shelved a project for three years while the client “wrote” his content