Great websites link out and don’t try to hide the fact that the web is a serious of connected entities. Making sure that we open external links in the same window instead of opening new windows and tabs actually encourages users to return to our site because they can click the back button and return more quickly.

I was having coffee the other day with a friend who has a lot of I.T. experience. He’s seen it all. We were discussing the fact that a university student is redesigning his organization’s website and he’s a bit skeptical that it’s going to go well.

The student may have a lot of talent and may even have some experience but he’s not a ...

In a little over a month, my girlfriend and I will be moving from our downtown apartment into a suburban home in North Edmonton. I’ve never actually owned a property and have always enjoyed the freedom from the necessity of maintenance that renting offers. If there’s a problem, I simply call my landlord and they come out and fix it free of charge.

Ownership is different though. For ...

2009 was an exciting year of growth for Lift – staffing, space, clientele and revenue. We experienced so much forward movement, in fact, that it landed us a spot on Alberta Venture’s 2010 Fast Growth 50 list. Needless to say, we’re honoured and thrilled to be among such glowing company – all innnovative, enterprising businesses, determined to not only keep themselves afloat during last year’s downturn, but actually emerge ...

We’ve all heard over and over about how we should be keeping things under source control – and for important sites, you probably do. But what about static sites? Do you keep them under source control, or do you just edit them manually?

I’ve recently been busy moving some of my own static sites from one server to another, which has given me a good opportunity to examine my ...

I’m a big fan of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s book, Freakonomics. If you don’t know the book, the gist is that the authors take a lot of raw data and apply statistical analysis to it in an effort to come away with a conclusion. Sounds pretty dry but the beauty of the book is in what data they choose and how they break it down. The ...

I recently stumbled across a fractal generator and thought I’d share the results here. I’d used them before but this one was a little simpler to use. It called Fractal4D and it’s an Adobe Air application so you need to have air installed to run it. Cyberra asked us to design a banner stand with the tagline “Cyberinfrastructure: The invisible infrastructure making things work” I thought a ...

“From the moment we arrived, we were treated like royalty.”

As cliché as it may sound, we really do feel privileged to have such a diverse range of clients to work for and we find that one of the more exciting parts of our business is the opportunity to really get to know them, their work and just what it is that makes them tick. Developing a clear understanding of ...

The landscape of the Internet (webscape?) is constantly changing. Building a community around a brand used to mean setting up a discussion forum on your website and letting people comment on a corporate blog. Now, that seems like a pretty low bar. With social media sites taking over, sites like Facebook, Twitter and aspects of Google, there are conversations happening in many more places. If you’ve got a product ...

You may have heard of a little something called Twitter. The other day, Luke discovered that if we went to Flirt Cupcakes on Whyte Ave (here in Edmonton) and said ”Sweet Georgia Brown” we’d get free cupcakes. So we did.

Apologies to Adrian, who got shafted in the this is the Lift crew intro at the 0:17 mark ;)