Overnight, my good friends at the Journal-World got all of their sites moved onto Django 1.0, and launched major redesigns of kusports.com and lawrence.com, as well as some subtle realigned of the flagship ljworld.com. The process of moving these sites to Django 1.0 has been ongoing for literally like two years, as they were previously running on a Django revision somewhere between .90 and .91. Now that they’re all caught up with the latest and great and have swanky new designs to work within, I hope to see my old team get back to what they do best: coving Lawrence like no other local paper in the world covers their beat. Congrats, guys.
For the curious, I believe the design work on Lawrence.com is primarily the work of Nathan Borror and kusports.com was lead by Christian Metts (guys, correct me if I’m wrong on that). Visit site »
Once again loving Nathan Borror’s information design for the election results in Lawrence, KS. It gets a little bit better every time — and it was kick ass the first time. Visit site »
I’ve recently had the pleasure of hanging out with Eric a few times, and I’ve gotta say: he one cool dude. Super nice, super chill, and super smart. Here, he talks with Kevin Fricovsky about several things Django, including his awesome work in Django testing and debugging and his new day job at World Online in Lawrence (for the sake of disclosure, Eric was not at World Online when I was). Good stuff. Visit site »
My man Jacob is leaving the Lawrence Journal-World for a startup that’s going to let him working on Django itself most of the time. Hard to blame him for that. Should be great for Jacob and great for Django. Congrats, man! Visit site »
The awesome team I worked with in Lawrence before joining Blue Flavor is looking to fill several new openings. Designers and developers alike will want to check these job descriptions out. Trust me, this is a great place to work, especially if you have an interest in editorial design online and/or working with Python and Django. Visit site »
A picture is worth a thousand words. Visit site »
My old cronies at the Journal-World continue to find innovative new ways to do database journalism. Today, they’re using the new Google charts API to display pie graphs of Kansas caucus results, and they’re also streaming the results to Twitter in near real-time. Awesome. Visit site »
Once again, my boys back in Lawrence are finalists for several Edgies. LJWorld.com is nominated for Best Overall News Site, Best Design and Site Architecture, and Most Innovative Multimedia Storytelling (for 24 Hours in Lawrence). Additionally, Lawrence.com is a finalist for Best Local Guide or Entertainment Site. Is it just me, or did the Edgies used to hve an award for sports sites?
Anyway, congrats to all the finalists — especially my buddies back in Lawrence. We’ll have to get everyone together and have some drinks — that LJWorld.com redesign we did seemed to pay off! Visit site »
Mediaphormedia, the company formerly known as World Online, is hiring a Senior Interaction Designer — basically, my old job. I can testify that this is a tremendous company to work for and that Lawrence, KS is a wonderful place to live and work. The town is cool, the bars are great, the music scene is phenomenal (maybe better than Seattle!) and the cost of living is insanely low. This is a great, great gig for someone out there. Feel free to e-mail me if you want more info on the company, the job, or Lawrence.
Also, on the name “Mediaphormedia” (I can say this, now that I’m not there anymore): It sucks. We know it. No one likes it. But there were intellectual property concerns over World Online (which was never a very good name, itself), and upper management (which is normally very “with it”) made a rash, hasty decision on a new name. Oh well. Still a damn cool place to work. They just got brand new offices, too. Visit site »
Compare and contrast: Ours. Theirs. Visit site »