Meet the GreenLite Team

Keeping up with the Sheep and Seagulls

Jeff — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:06:13 -0800

Last week Chris challenged me to try out a new web browser for a week. The browser is called Flock and it's available as a free download for Mac or PC.

Based on the popular Firefox browser, Flock takes the next step with keeping users constantly connected to their favorite social media. Whether you're into Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, MySpace (for real?), or any other social networking site, Flock has a way to keep it in your face at all times. To get started you just open Flock and enter your various usernames and passwords for sites you want to stay connected to. Flock adds these to a sidebar that displays updates from all of your friends, recently added pictures and video, or even just links to news stories. You'll also get a home page with a more detailed view of all this info (see the screenshot below).

There are a couple of things I really liked about Flock: it was really easy to connect to my various networks, eveyone's updates are aggregated into the same feed, and grabbing an RSS feed or media stream from a page was simple and quick. On the other side though, all of this constantly-updating information is a huge distraction. I'd log on to check my email and spend 30 minutes on Facebook, or I'd start to check my bank account only to find 10 new stories about a soon-to-be-released video game. While I wasn't particularly productive while on Flock, I always knew what everyone else was up to.

The one thing that really bugged me was that the default search was set to Yahoo. Now, I don't want to get into a "religious" discussion here, but let's just say that I generally prefer Google 100% of the time. However, a quick search (on Google) revealed that Flock is endorsed by Yahoo.

Long story short, Flock is great if you love social media. Why don't you take the challenge: try out Flock for a week and let me know what you think!

IgniteLansing 2.0

Jeff — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:42:19 -0700

A bunch of people from GreenLite and our parent company Artemis Solutions Group attended IgniteLansing 2.0 on Friday and it was a blast! The old Temple Club was decked out with dark lighting and looked amazing despite being under renovation.

Check out Steve Jencks's award-winning presentation about how to survive being in a B-movie:

Brian Azar also presented with a mixture of serious and humourous advice on surviving marriage:

We also want to congratulate Chris Bachelder from Artemis, who gave a presentation on the leadership of the creative class. All of the speakers' presentations are posted on IgniteLansing's YouTube channel.

Project Manager Meets New Media

Kate — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:05:19 -0700

Me...write a blog?? Okay, but only reluctantly. I'm typically old school. I shun facebook and think twitter seems off-the-charts ridiculous. However, I did take a job at a web company so I suppose I should adopt some of this new-age media even if I think it feeds into people's inflated sense of self-importance (what? you're suppose to make sweeping generalizations and be edgy when you write a
blog, right?).

Back to the official reason for the blog: I'm working as Greenlite's new project manager. My background is in print production and design so it's been interesting learning a new field. I've also enjoyed the flexibility of working for a tech-savvy company that doesn't think twice when employees work remotely and where co-workers utilize IM for instant communication. Most important, I have been impressed with the quality of design that Greenlite produces. In fact, that's one of our
biggest selling points--we get to use the same web designer as our parent-company, Artemis, which produces $100K+ websites. Therefore our
clients, who are often small business owners, get a unique and highly professional website that in my opinion outshines all of their competitors.

I'm looking forward to working with new clients and beautifying the web.

My one month at GreenLite

Meena — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:32:48 -0700

Hello my name is Meena and I am a web development intern here at GreenLite for the summer. I just finished my one month at GreenLite and it has been a thorougly enjoyable journey for me. In this period, I have seen two projects go from design to being functional. My primary responsibility is building sites using powerful CMS Drupal. The development process starts with converting a beautiful graphic design into a xhtml/css template. Then comes the stage of converting the template into a Drupal Theme. Finally, based on client needs and requirements, I integrate the necessary Drupal modules. From the start at GreenLite, I was encouraged to follow best practices such as making sites cross browser compatible and conforming to W3C and web accessibility standards.

Progressing through my graduate courses, I realized how important media, content and technology play in getting across information to the end user (which circumstantially could be me). I feel that a website is a great way for large as well as small businesses to reach out to more number of people. Also, I believe, first impression of the site is very important as it helps in building a positive relationship with the visitor.

Over the next two months of my internship, I hope to further learn the nuances of building websites while gaining new skills and valuable experience.

Our New Design Rocks!

Lorely — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:34:34 -0700

Our 1st corporate website design was a complete success, chosen from among the millions of websites that now populate the web to be featured in many web design showcase galleries.

When we decided to replace our corporate site with a more advanced, functional interface for our clients we hoped that the new functionality didn't get in the way of our outstanding design. Our fears were unfounded. Once more, our site continues to be picked as an example of some of the best website designs out there. Check out our listing in www.cssice.com, a CSS web gallery whose mission is to showcase the "most beautiful designs in the web".

Introduction

Rachel — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:46:17 -0700

My name is Rachel Macauley and I am an GreenLite intern for the summer. My tasks this summer include increasing the use of GreenLite’s current social media sites and seeing what other potential sites to overall expand the companies online social presence.

Social Media is key for any business today. Not only does it allow you to contact with colleagues and clients, it also gives you a connection to your consumers that has never been seen before. Creating your profiles and building your network is only the first step in any social network. What really takes the time and the effort is actually using the sites and putting out useful information. This is what really builds the relationship between you and the consumer.

As I delve into this internship I hope to bring GreenLite into a whole other level, where their past, current, and potential costumers can interact with them on a personal level through the use of these social networks.

Investing in People

Brian — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:42:00 -0700

Growing businesses face many challenges and one of the toughest to navigate through is when and how to invest in people. Every business owes its success to the talent and skill of it’s people. Smart and motivated employees will deliver better results, and will help you grow faster. Likewise, failing to invest in the talent and skills a business needs will limit the potential of that business, and increase staff stress while decreasing productivity. People can only stretch themselves for so long, and so far, before they get frustrated. Your customers are unlikely to be patient while you get your mix of skills and staffing figured-out…

GreenLite’s growth recently forced us to make choices about how and where to invest in talent. After some observation and investigation we’ve decided to bring on additional project management talent. There are a lot of ways and places we might have invested, and right now this is the right place for us. We also know that this won’t “fix” everything, it’s just the next step in our growth and soon we’ll have other stresses and challenges to navigate through. I bet we’ll be looking for another developer next…

GreenLite Design Ranked #1

Lorely — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:06:00 -0700

The design for our corporate site, greenliteweb.com, has been chosen the Editor's Favorite AND the Best Rated website by cmsdesign.org, an organization that evaluates and ranks designs from several open source content management systems.

The GreenLite website was choosen as the top Drupal CMS design, outranking much larger and better-known websites including American Idol Music and the Wine Institute.

We are happy that our passion for high-quality and innovative design has been recognized by our peers.

Go GreenLite!

Blogging - To Go!

Jeff — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:59:59 -0800

Since I'm waiting for over an hour to get a table at this fancy restaurant, I figured I would see if I could post to the blog from my Blackberry. The verdict? It works!

Enjoy your Valentine's Day tomorrow!

GreenLite on Last.fm

Chris — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:38:08 -0800

Anyone in this office can tell you that Jeff and I love music. We also love to listen while we work. We think listening to music at work makes better websites. A website is often the first thing a prospective client sees - it should have soul, flair, life. Listening to music helps us acheive this.

Jeff and I are both Last.fm enthusiasts, so we thought it would be cool to make an account for GreenLite - to keep track of the music we listen to at work and connect with clients who are also on Last.fm. If you have a Last.fm account, feel free to add us. If you don't, check us out anyway.

http://www.last.fm/user/greenliteweb