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The all new Amnesty.dk

Who wouldn't fight for amnesty? We did! We've not only did it, but we've built the new Amnesty.dk so everybody can fight for amnesty having a strong online base.

The new Amnesty.dk is all about interactivity, communication, engagement and support. The technology and the design work together to provide visitors the possibility to become a part of the solution and the possibility to act themselves.

Powered by Drupal, the immediate benefit and a great improvement is that it's much easier to update and maintain the website on a daily basis. "Now we are able to present the issues in almost real time, thus engaging the visitors to take actions for human rights", says Nikolas Glen, Amnesty International Direct Marketing Coordinator.

Featuring a clean, minimalist, but visually intensive design, Amnesty.dk layout is arranged to lead visitors' attention to the most important content on the mainpage and throughout the site. Browsing the website and accessing all the content is a matter of few clicks due to the intuitive navigation system.

Amnesty.dk is also developed as an e-commerce solutions, allowing visitors to shop right on the website without the need to disclose their private data to the third party intermediaries. In addition, Amnesty.dk has it's own Customer Relation Management system, so the Amnesty stuff can connect and track each visitor on an individual level. On the new Amnesty.dk visitors can manifest their support by signing campaigns, making donations, leaving comments and sharing their concerns and opinions. Contributing to the Amnesty's causes is easier than ever before.

Nikolas Glen, Amnesty International Direct Marketing Coordinator, says: "With the new Amnesty.dk, it is easier to get information about human rights and Amnesty International; it is easier to engage in human rights issues and support Amnesty financially or through activism. It is also easier for us to communicate with our members and supporters because now we can deliver a more personalized and relevant message to each and everyone of them."

Conceptually, the new Amnesty.dk is the right approach to the new challenges of the Web and Amnesty International can now directly communicate and interact with visitors, members and supporters.

Visit the new Amnesty.dk and fight for amnesty... as we did!

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Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

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Community input for your business

In our first post about Twitter we made several important statements about the business opportunities on Twitter. One of the statements said: "Twitter is a space to gain real time feedback and a perfect research tool when it comes to find out customers’ needs and wants." We wanted to experience the potential of Twitter for our business.

Five days ago, we asked our almost 600 followers a simple question "What to-do applications do you use? Would you recommend it to your best friend?" As a full service creative web agency with a busy schedule we wanted to know what are the best to-do lists our employees can use.

We got about a dozen of great recommendations, while the first reply came in only three minutes:
@Uffekoch: "I have tried almost every possible method and app for both win and mac, but I keep going back to good old mindmaps in freemind."
@ppmw: GTDTiddlyWiki Plus, yes I do recommend it. I am also on GTDAgenda and Nozbe but they make limits I don't like
@hansnilsson: "The Hit List, just missing syncing with iPhone, otherwise the best app yet."
@mmartinov: todoist.com totally rocks! ;-)
@tbertram: Omnifocus for mac and iphone they are cool
@jonasmaaloe: nowdothis.com er min hemmelige nødbremse når alt andet fejler. til daglig bruger jeg things til mac (nowdothis.com is my secret thing, when everything else fails. On a everyday basis I use things for mac)
@perusio: My TODO app: Org Mode http://orgmode.org with Remember Mode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RememberMode #emacs is required.

In addition to great recommendations, our followers shared some of their oppinions about to-do lists and their utility:
@renejsum:  the perfect TODO app has yet til be invented, for a short while 10 year ago the Palm did the trick...
@ohhansen: @renejsum @uffekoch @propeople I keep thinking that TODO list is more like a guilt list - and what about all that is not on the list?
@Uffekoch: @ohhansen @renenejsum @propeople I agree to an extend, but as David #GTD Allen says: its great to look at a prioritized list of everything on your mind & know you are focusing on the most important, and then be able to say to the rest: you are not it!

In the end, we received a request to share our findings so our followers could benefit too. @ohhansen wrote us: "let me know what you find. I'm currently working on http://veloc.it/y and I want to add something great for #todo management" We love to share with the community and hope these findings will help @ohhansen make a better to do list.

Twitter is a great tool to get people together so they can help eachother. Our followers helped us to identify the best to-do lists, while we shared with them our findings. It's a win-win situation both for us as a company and for our followers on Twitter.

Keep tweeting and follow Propeople on Twitter.

P.S. Special thank you to everyone responding to our inquiries. You're helping us one tweet at a time.

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Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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Supporting the Drupal community

DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 is coming in town. Propeople has the privilege to proudly support the Danish Drupal community by becoming a DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 Platinum Sponsor. The event is organized by the Danish Drupal Association and is now at its second edition (2.0). The first edition was organized in November 2008 and since back then Propeople has taken an pro-active role in contributing for the event.

Michael Koefoed Steensborg Drejer, Propeople CEO, believes the community is the core of Drupal's success. "As the leading Drupal development company in Denmark and an Acquia Platinum partner, Propeople has the responsibility to be a part of the Drupal community and to support it. Sponsoring DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 is a great privilege to support the Drupal community both in Denmark and around the world." says Michael Koefoed Steensborg Drejer.

DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 focuses to consolidate the Danish Drupal community, that is to bring Drupal developers together to discuss Drupal related topics to find efficient solutions. The event also aims to present Drupal to the Danish web-developer who are not yet famillyar with Drupal. There is a growing demand in qualified Drupal developers in Denmark, so web-developers can find new opportunities by addopting Drupal.

Looking beyond locally, another purpose of the DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 is to come up with a list of suggestions for the theming layer in Drupal. This already has been started at DrupalCon DC and a special theming group is already working on this issue. There will be several sessions at the DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 ending with a panel discussion that should summize the Camp 's suggestions for a better theming layer in Drupal.

DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 features such great speakers as Addison Berry, Todd Ross Nienkerk, Morten Birch Heide-Jørgensen and many others. This DrupalCamp is the place to meet great people and directly contribute to the development of Drupal.

Propeople will be live-blogging from DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0. Don't miss the DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 live on Propeople blog on May 22-24, 2009.

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Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

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Shrinking the Web

The content on-line is shrinking. The trend is to write less and straight to the point. A web writing guide says: "Documents intended for online reading should rarely be longer than 1,000 words. A good target to aim for is 600 to 700 words"... that is little more than half a page in 10pt, Arial.

The Internet evolved into a social club. People use Internet to communicate and interact in real time through IM and social networks. Online behavior tends to simulate real life. Instant communication is about exchanging short messages, and this is what users are looking for to experience online.

There is so much out there that "on an average weekday, the New York Times contains more information than any contemporary of Shakespeare's would have acquired in a lifetime". Caught in a huge stream of information, people online don't bother writing/reading lengthy articles, reports, blog posts, comments and even status updates. Neighter you have to do it.

Now, the conlussion is to keep it short and straight to the point.

P.S. I also could keep this post shorter because the conclussion only repeats the statement in the second sentence :)

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Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

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First impressions about Windows 7

As soon as Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) was made available yesterday, I was ready to download and install it on my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. I knew the transition to Windows 7 will be smooth because I explored Windows 7 features in the previous article.

The first thing before even downloading Windows 7 is to make sure your PC is suitable for Windows 7 minimum system requirements: 1 GHz or faster processor, 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit), 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit), DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. In case you have such a PC, you're ready to move forward.

Downloading Windows 7 RC was pretty easy. First you need to choose between 32-bit or 64-bit version of the system; then register with your MSN e-mail account, introduce some personal information and after confirming the ownership of the e-mail you'll be given the product key. Make sure you print or write down you product key, as it is very important for activating Windows 7 RC.

The next step is to burn the setup package on a DVD and to make sure the DVD works properly. Now you just need to do one very important thing: Back up your PC . Ideally, install the system on an formatted partition of your harddrive, but if you have only one partition, you'll need to save your data on an external harddrive, DVDs or other memory devices. Having your data backed up, you're ready to install Windows 7. You can find detailed Windows 7 RC Installation instructions on Microsoft's website.

The beauty of Windows 7 installation process is that the system guides you through the entire process and you literally do nothing. After inserting the disk and indicating the specifc partition for installation. Installation was complete in about 15 min. The system detected and installed all necessary drivers for video, audio, LAN, wi-fi, chipset, etc. When I first logged in, all the system elements were up and running. The whole system was perfectly tuned up and ready for work.

Exploring Windows 7 on my laptop, I noticed two important improvements: extended battery life and cooler processor. First, when running Windows XP, my battery was good for about an hour, but with Windows 7 my battery stays half longer, that is for an hour an a half. Second, Windows XP was heating up my laptop very quickly, but with Windows 7 I can feel my laptop is less warmer and the coller is working less frequently.

Indeed, Windows 7 is much faster than Vista and XP. Graphics are great and enjoyable. Improved navigation between windows and programs makes a better working experience. Windows 7 is definitely worth trying, and it is free untill June 2010.

Propeople expert

Martin Kulov is Microsoft department manager at Propeople with more than 10 years of experience. He is a leading expert in such technologies as WCF, VSTS, ASP.NET and IIS. Martin is member of INETA Speakers Bureau and often speaks at international events. In 2006, Martin has been awarded with the award Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) in Team System category. Feel free to contact Martin info (at) propeople . dk write "Martin" in the subject.

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