American Media’s flagship website Radar Online is nominated for the MIN Best of the Web awards in three categories: “Digital Team of the Year,” “Editorial Excellence,” and “Use of Facebook.” A second AMI site, Muscle & Fitness, is also nominated in the “Content Marketing Program or Campaign” category.
Category Archives: Design
AMP has arrived!
The announcement hit our inbox this morning: Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Project – aka AMP – is officially out now. Previewed last October, AMP is an open source project for content creators who can now “create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere.” Crucial stuff now as the Web’s primary viewership moves over to mobile devices!
Rant Alert: Websites are too fat!
Monday mornings are usually difficult, but today – with aching tributes emanating from all corners of the globe in the wake of David Bowie’s passing – is even worse then normal. So what better distraction than a good old-fashioned rant about the sorry state of website bloat???
AWS & HeartyHosting
There are many ways of implementing a high quality service to support high-load websites. Each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages. In building out our own HeartyHosting platform, we have explored many of these various solutions. Below I have tried to combine the advantages, simplicity, and affordability. You will notice that in all cases, we found Amazon Web Services (AWS) to be a superior platform – which is why it is so central to HeartyHosting!
OUT NOW: WordPress 4.4
WordPress 4.4 – dubbed “Clifford” after jazz trumpet great Clifford Brown – is out now with some significant improvements. Along with better responsive image handling, the RestAPI has been better integrated to give “developers an easy way to build and extend RESTful APIs on top of WordPress.” The clean “Twenty Sixteen” theme is also a new addition, promising even better responsive design across platforms. Check out the teaser video from the folks at WordPress:
NYC subway info systems derail
CityLab recently published a fascinating story about the ongoing struggle to upgrade internal and customer-facing information systems in New York City’s subway system – the MTA. I highly recommend the read.
James Somers does a succinct job surveying the complexity – physical and human – of bringing large-scale change to a system that’s a hundred-plus years old, a utility depended upon by millions every single day. Though the MTA’s is a monumental endeavor, the issues will be painfully familiar to those of us involved in software development on smaller scales: entrenched systems, non-cooperative organizations and entities, non-existent requirements docs – the list is wince-inducing. It’s a clear-eyed view into the trials and tribulations of dragging a transportation system rooted in the 19th century into the 21st.
iHeartRadio goes responsive
Continuing a relationship that goes back several years, we are happy to be working with iHeartMedia Inc. to make their flagship iHeartRadio site more responsive. Collaborating with in-house designers – and utilizing battle-tested techniques with various front-end technologies: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, React.js, etc. – our senior front-end development team is ensuring that the iHeartRadio site performs flawlessly on today’s vast array of mobile devices.
Getting in tune with ASCAP
Boyle Software’s client roster recently grew with the addition of ASCAP – The American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers. We’re very happy to be assisting the much-respected performing rights organization on a variety of development projects.
Founded more than 100 years ago, ASCAP collects performance royalties for some of the biggest names in music, from yesterday and today: Beyoncé, Duke Ellington, Katy Perry, The Beatles, Jay-Z, and George Gershwin have all been a part of the ASCAP story. Who wouldn’t be excited to be working closely with an organization with such an amazing history? We at Boyle Software look forward to a long and harmonious relationship.
Quick check for responsiveness
ami.responsivedesign.is has a neat tool to quickly check if the layout of a website responds properly. It is also very useful when a screenshot of a site on different devices is needed.
Granted, it’s somewhat Apple-biased, but it still should come in handy at times!
Radar Online redesigned
We are happy to report the successful launch of the newly redesigned Radar Online website for our client AMI.
In a recent company press release, AMI’s Chief Digital Officer Brian Kroski explained concisely the goals of the visual and technological upgrade: