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For those of you who have not yet heard of Incarnate it is a service, built by the Mix Online team, to make managing avatars easy. Incarnate searches the web to find and reuse your avatars, so you don’t have to upload a new one everytime you join a new service or want to leave a comment. According to the Mix Online website, “Incarnate is a REST-based service that uses peoples’ usernames to find their avatars on the web. To do this Incarnate queries Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Xbox Live, and Youtube.”

Incarnate is a fully customizable service that will fit seamlessly into your blog, but until recently was not yet integrated with WordPress. To solve this problem, Mix Online enlisted us to help them build a WordPress plug-in. Vicky Tamaru explains the steps we took to do this, as a contibutor to the Mix Online website, in her article “A WordPress Plug-In for Incarnate.”

If you like what you have heard see how easy it is to intergrate Incarnate with your blog post comments by downloading and installing the WordPress plug-in.

We were met with what could have been a potentially chaotic and stressful situation on Tuesday when we had a server hard-drive fail. You can imagine how crippling this could be for a digital agency such as ours. Although we have a service contract to provide us with a replacement should something like this happen, it can sometimes be difficult to get the right person to respond quickly.

Luckily, we had no reason to worry since all of our data is mirrored locally, as well as backed up off-site through the Doyenz ShadowCloud disaster recovery platform. This allowed us to avoid any downtime, or hair loss, from what could have been a very nerve-racking situation. I guess mom was right; it really does pay to be prepared!

Like our Co-Founder and Executive Producer Vicky Tamaru said with a shrug, “Stuff happens. That is why we take the measures we do.”

We would like to welcome the newest member to the Plexipixel family, Jake Kinsley! Jake will be working closely with our project management team acting as strategy-massager, translator, scribe, coach, cheerleader and more for our internal technical and creative teams and clients. 

Jake is a Northwest native who attended Western Washington University where he played football for the Vikings while earning his degree in psychology.  After graduation Jake tapped into his adventurist side, backpacking across Europe. After returning from his European adventure Jake began working as an interactive marketing project manager and online marketing consultant.

For the past four years he has specialized in web-related project management, and SEO and social media marketing consulting. Jake says, “I really love helping people bring their vision to life.”

When he his not busy helping our clients’ businesses be more successful using 0s and 1s, you can usually find Jake hustling people at the card table or studying the art of Iaido (the exquisite art of the samurai sword).

Stay tuned to the blog to see photos of Jake and the rest of the Plexi team from our upcoming annual Crazy Christmas Sweater contest!

According to the article on MediaBistro, “Disney Online, Clorox to Open The Possibility Shop”,  and as first reported on AdAge.com The Jim Henson Co. produced the first ever branded entertainment program on Disney Online, The Possibility Shop. Disney partnered with Clorox to create this web video series as a unique way to promote Clorox Brands without showing the products themselves. Instead the episodes will feature Clorox-branded vignettes revealing each brands effectiveness for cleaning the home. The program debuted last week on Disney Online.

And Disney Online vice president of advertising sales Brad Davis added:

  
image care of Advertisng Age

Plexipixel would like to welcome our newest member to the team, Vicki Lo, a crime-fighting urban-ninja. Vicki or Vics as she likes to be called was trained in the deadly art of chopstick-jitsu while being raised by a clan of urban-ninjas on the rough streets of Norcal.  After her ninja training was complete Vics continued to expand her skill set, while studying graphic design at UC Davis. Vics continued to hone her design skills while working for a few design studios in Norcal as an Interactive Designer/Illustrator.

When she is not working or busy using her ninja skills to protect our streets she enjoys baking, running, long walks on the beach, and collecting pog slammers, slap bracelets and kittywigs. And no, this is not a start to a personal ad. Sorry boys, but we are not a dating service. She did however just relocate to the Seattle area, so if you see her out wandering the streets of Cap Hill be nice and help welcome her to the great Northwest. To learn more about Vics and see some of her work check out her website, www.chopstickattack.com.

ABC is introducing a new feature aimed at encouraging viewers who stream their favorite shows online to make the experience more social. This past weekend the networked launched ABC Social: Episode Commentary on ABC.com. The new tool allows web viewers to add their thoughts by commenting on the show in an adjacent window to the left of the sites video viewer. To learn more…

Let us know your thoughts on this new feature from ABC.

I am not sure if anyone has noticed my posts over the last week, but I am the new face here at Plexipixel. My name is Justin Nix and I will be working closely with Vicky on the sales and marketing side of things. I am joining the Plexipixel team after spending the last five years working as part of the sales and marketing department for Connelly Skis Inc., a water-ski and wakeboard manufacturer, based in Lynnwood, Washington.

I just wanted to introduce myself, give a quick hello, and let everyone know how psyched I am to be a member of the Plexipixel team. Stay tuned for more blog posts, Facebook updates, and Twitter updates as I try to bring you relevant info in between the hazing and initiation rituals I have to complete =).

My first two weeks have already been incredibly interesting and entertaining. Check out my Brett Michaels costume and the rest of the pics from our Halloween Costume Contest in my previous post.

Tuesday was Cinco de Mayo. To celebrate, Taco Del Mar offered up the Burrito Challenge: Eat a 5-pound burrito in 30 minutes, and they would give you $20. After purchasing the $17.99 burrito and paying due tax, you could walk away with almost 30 cents!

After weighing the pros and cons, most people in the office decided that while we did need to see the 5-pound burrito, and hopefully see someone eat it, nobody was willing to try. Except Joe.

In mid November I took a trip to San Francisco for the Adobe MAX conference. I left a few days early so that I could attend ADIM (Art Directors Invitational Master class), a pre-conference event hosted by Russell Brown an adobe tips & tricks master! ADIM is basically an annual outlet for graphic designers to break away from their daily grind, to network, to dress up in crazy outfits, and to create a fun theme based project that uses the latest and greatest techniques and technologies being used in the field.

This year’s project, based on the theme Jurassic Safari, was to create a lenticular poster using Photoshop CS4’s impressive new 3-d tools. When it was time to show off what we had created it was clear that some of the ADIM veterans had been working on their projects long before the conference had even began. Maybe next year I’ll come more prepared because the creator of the best project won a copy of the Adobe Master Suite collection! The Adobe MAX conference kicked off with an over the top keynote session introducing new Adobe products and new technologies. The session was set up more like a concert than a conference with an exciting light and screen display and an impressive DJ. The keynote also featured guest appearances by Bud Albers, the CTO of Disney Interactive and the first lady of California, Maria Shriver, who declared that she thought she was at a Star Trek convention, which for a good number of the software geeks in attendance was most likely a compliment.

The next few days at MAX were filled with plenty of sessions showing off the new features found in CS4. A few of my favorite new CS4 features: Photoshop’s content aware scaling tool; Illustrator’s use of multiple art boards and blob brush tool; and Flash’s object based animation and bones tool.

One of my favorite sessions was a presentation by Simone Legno, the uber talented creator of the popular brand Tokidoki, who talked about his career path and the inspiration behind a few of his many awesome characters. It was especially cool to hear Simone explain his thought process behind the creation of my favorite Tokidoki character, Sandy. Sandy, as Simon explains, is a naïve and vulnerable little girl who protects herself from a scary world by wearing a cactus suit. Sandy is one of the many endearing characters in Tokidoki’s collection. Simone Legno’s illustrations have made their mark on today’s popular culture, and his amazing success story is such an inspiration to a young designer like me.

Overall the Adobe MAX and ADIM conferences were a great experience, I learned more than my brain could possibly absorb, made some talented new friends, and came home with almost 15 pounds of swag!

If you watched the CNN Inauguration Coverage for President Obama on Tuesday, you may already recognize this as it was a special feature in the broadcast. Our friends over at Photosynth, in partnership with CNN, released a special Inauguration Synth created from submitted photos the public captured at the event. Entitled “The Moment”, this Silverlight widget allows you to browse through the hundreds of photos that were taken using Photosynth’s technology that creates interactive 3D spaces from 2D photos.

Not so long ago, when the technology was first launched, we worked with the Photosynth team to create their first website. Be sure to check out the latest iteration of the Photosynth site where they’ve opened up the technology to the public to submit user generated content to create custom Synths that are showcased in the growing online gallery.