18 Jan, 2010

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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2009 Chisinau drupal Microsoft Propeople sofia

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Copenhagen
Design
Drupal
Propeople
Sofia

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Propeople 2009 retrospective

Amazing! This is the word to describe Propeople in 2009. It has been a tremendous year. In just a year Propeople (1) expanded by establishing a new office in Moldova, (2) gained the higher status by becoming an Acquia Drupal Platinum Partner and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, (3) supported and actively participated at the most important events in the Drupal and Microsoft communities, (4) as well as developed unique and outstanding projects for distinguished clients.

It’s hard to explain all this great stuff in just few words, so we made a 2009 timeline of the major events at Propeople. Take a closer look, as you may find yourself in there too.

February
First trip to Moldova to establish the Propeople office in Chisinau, Moldova.
Michael Drejer, Welin Welchev and Michel Samucha came to Moldova for headhunting. In just three days they met most of the leading Moldovan web designers and web developers. One month later, Propeople had its first five designers and developers starting the work in Moldova.

March
Propeople become an official Acquia Drupal Platinum Partner, the company that provides products, services, and technical support for Drupal.
This partnership strengthens Propeople leadership position in cutting-edge trends and technologies, and forges Propeople as the leading Drupal company in Scandinavia, being the only Acquia Drupal Platinum Partner in the region (along with other 5 worldwide).

DrupalCon in Washington DC

Michael Drejer, Welin Welchev, Jens Beltofte Sørensen, Denis Chakarov and Svilen Sabev attended DrupalCon in Washington DC.

Microsoft Most Valued Professional

Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Award recipients from Propeople, Martin Kulov (VSTS MVP) and Coskun Sunali (ASP.NET MVP) have attended the MVP Global Summit, one of the largest multiday Microsoft MVP events. At the MVP Global Summit, MVPs receive access to exclusive technical content, participate in direct feedback sessions, and meet with Microsoft executives, product teams, and their peers from around the world. Microsoft executives and employees welcome MVPs to the Global Summit at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington and in Seattle.

April
Propeople got really serious about blogging and social media. Check out Propeople blog... (ah, you're actually reading it :) and follow Propeople on Twitter.

May
Propeople had the privilege to proudly support the Danish Drupal community by becoming a DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 Platinum Sponsor.
"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." said Michael Koefoed Steensborg Drejer.

June
Propeople Moldova is oficially registered and opens a fully functional office in Chisinau, Moldova. We're always glad to see you in Moldova.

July
Propeople representative, Martin Kulov, in the jury for Imagine Cup 2009.

Imagine Cup 2009

Imagine Cup 2009, held in Cairo on July 02-08, is the world’s largest students contest on Microsoft technologies. Martin Kulov was invited to be part of the jury along with other very important and respected Microsoft professionals.

August
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Small Business Specialist
Propeople is officially a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. The MS Gold Certified Partner status represents the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies, and the closest working relationship with Microsoft. Propeople was also assigned the special competency as a Small Business Specialist through proven competency in marketing, selling, planning, and building solutions for small businesses.

September
Live blogging from DrupalCon Paris
As an Acquia Drupal Platinum Partner, Propeople has actively participated at DrupalCon Paris and has provided live coverage from the conference on Propeople blog. Check out our live coverage on the DrupalCon Paris tag.

November
ProPeople is now a Microsoft BizSpark Network Partner
Being a BizSpark Network Partner, Propeople can now identify startup companies and individuals in the Scandinavian market and provide them with guidance on their future prospects, technological know-how and validate their eligibility for the BizSpark program. The program itself provides incredible value and the necessary tools to build highly innovative solutions using the latest Microsoft technologies.

December
One of the greatest news for the New Year is that DrupalCon is coming to Copenhagen in August 2010. Propeople will do all the best to make DrupalCon Copenhagen an awesome and unforgettable event for the global Drupal community.

We would like to say a big THANK YOU to all our friends and supporters for being with us in 2009. For the new 2010, we promise to exceed all your highest expectations through full commitment, genuine passion and hard work.

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21 Jul, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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Episerver showcase

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Design
EPiServer
Propeople

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Outstanding EPiServer websites

EPiServer is a proprietary web content management system (CMS) used for managing information on an intranet, extranet or a public website. EPiServer is based on .NET framework technology.

EPiServer is one of the fastest growing proprietary web content management systems. More than 8,500 websites worldwide use EPiServer, and every day two new sites built on EPiServer go live.

This showcase contains over 30 outstanding EPiServer websites to help you discover the possibilities of the EPiServer CMS for your website. Enjoy.

Oriflame

Renault Sweden

Farnborough College of Technology

Fans1
Fans1

Danske Fysioterapeuter
Fysio.dk

Toshiba UK Home Entertainment

Do you know any other outstanding EPiServer websites? Share them with us.

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09 Jul, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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corporate design web web design

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Design
Propeople

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Preserving the corporate web design

Corporate design is the official graphical design of a company’s main identification signs such as logo, type, colors, etc. Corporate design should also be applied to the company’s website in such a way that all the elements are arranged in a distinguished pattern.

The following showcase is a great example how an international company is applying its corporate design on the web. Orange is present in eleven countries on two continents, yet all the websites follow a unique corporate design, which creates an outstanding powerful brand.

What other companies are preserving their corporate design across the boundaries?

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03 Jul, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

Tags

business design drupal education entertainment governemnt Media non-profit showcase

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Design
Drupal
Propeople

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The Ultimate Drupal Showcase

Drupal is a great open-source CMS suitable for virtually any kind of websites. This Ultimate Drupal Showcase contains over 150 Drupal based websites grouped in six major categories: business, media, government, non-profit, university & research and entertainment. Enjoy.

Business
Ubuntu
Ubuntu

ConsumerSearch
Consumer Search

Nesto
Nesto

Favorite Things

Feel free to add your Drupal based website to this Ultimate Drupal Sites Showcase.

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04 Jun, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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free gift summer nights wordpress wp theme

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Design
Propeople

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Summer Nights: a gift for our friends

Summer Nights

Summer Nights is a visually-rich personal blog WordPress theme. We created this minimalist, clean and widget ready theme to meet all of your personal blogging needs.

Summer Nights

Full Preview - Download

Motivation
We release Summer Nights as a summer gift for all our friends, supporters and blog visitors. We are committed to offer the best products and services, thus we made Summer Night a minimalist, ready-to-go and bug free theme. Enjoy all the beauty of the Summer Nights!

Disclaimer: Summer Nights is a free theme release and we release it "as is". We will not be offering any support to users of this theme.

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22 May, 2009

Written by:
Propeople

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amnesty.dk design e-commerce web 2.0 web development

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Copenhagen
Design
Drupal
Propeople

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The all new Amnesty.dk

Amnesty International

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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08 May, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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blog content style web

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Design
Propeople

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Shrinking the Web

Short story

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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15 Apr, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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browser user web

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Design
Propeople

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Popular browsers around the world

The most popular browsers around the world

Yesterday we announced on Twitter that according to some stats, Firefox 3 just became the most popular browser in Europe. This is great news for the web-development industry and for Propeople in particular, as we are a full service creative web agency. We are looking forward for users to use browsers that support all coding standards. Also, we already explained why we want to get rid of IE6.

We looked deeper into statistics to see what browsers are used in different countries and parts of the world. Here is what we came up with.

First, we discovered there are big differences in browsers usability in different part of the world. Europe is on the edge between Firefox 3 and IE7, North America is dominated by IE7 and Asia is deep into IE6 and IE7.

Second, users from different European countries prefer different browsers. For instance, in Denmark over 55% of users prefer IE7, and only about 20% use Firefox 3. We found quite the same picture in Netherlands (IE7 – 58%, FF3 – 19%), Norway (IE7 - 52%, FF3 - 23%), France (IE7 - 52%, FF3 - 27%), UK (IE7 - 49%, FF3 - 24%), Sweden (IE7 – 48%, FF3 - 23%), Italy (IE7 - 43%, FF3 - 28%).

On the opposite side, there are countries where users prefer FF3 over IE7. These countries are Germany (FF3 - 54%, IE7 - 22%), Finland (FF3 – 47%, IE7 – 29%), Poland (FF3 – 44%, IE7 - 20%), Switzerland (FF3 – 40%, IE7 – 35%), Romania (FF3 - 38%, IE7 - 21%), Bulgaria (FF3 - 35%, IE7 - 25%) and Czech Republic (FF3 – 41%, IE7 – 26%).

Overall, it seems internet users in Central and Eastern European countries mostly prefer Firefox 3, while Western Europeans like IE7.

Third, there is almost no difference in browser preferences in USA and Canada. In both countries, users prefer IE7 over FF3. However, recently Firefox 3 started to gain more ground in the US.

Finally, Asia surprised us the most. It’s incredible that Chinese (57%), South Korean (44%) and Indian (41%) users choose to browse the web using IE6. In Japan, IE7 is the most popular browser (42%), followed by IE6 (22%) and FF3 (21%). The opposite, in Indonesia and Philippines the most popular browser is Firefox 3.

We were amazed to discover a totally special case in Kazakhstan, where the most popular browser is Opera 9.6 (23%), followed by Firefox 3 (20%), IE7 (18) and IE6 (13%).

In conclusion we can certainly say there are big differences in browsers’ popularity in Europe, North America and Asia. Moreover, there are significant differences between countries within the same part of the world. Indeed, when developing a web product for a specific country, it is totally useful to observe browsers usage stats and trends in that country... because they are all different.

Data from gs.statcounter.com

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06 Apr, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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research web

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Design
Propeople

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Research about the Web

Web science

Few days ago Propeople tweeted about free access to all SAGE Journals, including such relevant domains as information science, media, marketing, and management. Being a full service creative web agency, Propeople couldn’t resist exploring the latest scholar research about and around the Web. It’s amazing how many terrific findings were stated over the last year and all of them are very practical and applicable in our work. Some of these great researches are worth sharing.

In our previous post about Creative Twitter profiles, we said one of the key factors to impress your visitors at their first visit is to have a unique and creative design of your Twitter profile. We said it based on our observation, but we also found a scientific explanation. The results of this study indicate that people make quick judgments when visiting a Web site and the most important two factors to create a favorable impression are inspiration (design) and usability of the web page.

Along with design, users pay attention and memorize the content of the page. This research suggests there are ways to improve the content in such a way that users would easier memorize the content and its elements. Specifically, researchers recommend “designers who want users to remember hyperlinks should associate those hyperlinks with content that reflects the relation between the contents on the Web pages.”

When talking about the usefulness and the impact of a campaign web site, this study concluded “that effects of campaign web sites vary across individual engagements and generally support reinforcement theory rather than mobilization theory.” In other words, a web site can have different effects on individuals, but the main fact is that a web site reinforces the message of the political candidate, rather than mobilizing supporters.

We also got to know there is no best search engine when it comes to “freshness” of the data. The results of the study sais “the best search engine in terms of up-to-dateness changes over the years and that none of the engines has an ideal solution for index freshness.” In addition, indexing is often irregular, thus causing a major problem: “the delay in making crawled pages available for searching.”

One of the great news we found for ourselves is that “students use social networks not only for leisure and personal socialization but also as a platform for more meaningful and serious deliberations”. Researches argue that employers may find young professionals over social networks and that the work environment may be improved when employees have their virtual community, especially in an international/cross-cultural company. It’s interesting that “upcoming professionals will use [social networks] far more meaningfully than current professionals do.”

Finally, we were delightful to read Niels Brügger’s (University of Aarhus, Denmark) article “Website history and the website as an object of study”. The article focuses “on the ‘website’ artifact as a medium and a text.” The author elaborates a definition of the website, and deliberates about “how the website is distinct from other possible analytical web objects (the web as a whole, web sphere, webpage and textual web element)” At the end, the researcher “outlines some of the key issues in a general discussion of website history.”

We are still browsing through the articles and continue to find new great things that are extremely useful for us as a creative web agency. The access to SAGE Online Journals is free until April 30, so you may now register on the SAGE web site and explore over 500 scholar journals to find scientifically documented data and information of your interest.

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02 Apr, 2009

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

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twitter

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Design

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Creative Twitter profiles

Twitter is simple, but having a successful Twitter experience requires more than just typing around 140 characters. Strategy, vision, continuity, openness, communication skills are all important for becoming successful, but before proving your ability you get only few seconds to impress your visitors and convince them to follow you.

There are two key factors for impressing your visitors at their first visit: your recent tweets and the design of your Twitter profile. When reading your recent tweets people may find them interesting and decide to follow you, but the best way to jump out of the crowd is to have a unique, creative, and impressive design of your Twitter profile. Believe it or not, there are literally a handful number of genuinely impressive profiles designs among millions of Twitter users.

Get inspired with these custom designed Twitter profiles and think for your own outstanding design.

@natalie

@waynesutton

@KimDeanArt

@HungryGirl

@AdrianApan

@problogger

@anousone

@gopalraju

@bartelme

@zaythar

Do you already have an outstanding Twitter profile?