T-minus 60 days. http://www.mailbomb.co.nz/

*cue dramatic sound*

What’s brewing at MaxGen? What isn’t.

On top of launching a slew of new XSIS WebMaster-powered websites, stick around for all this goodness:

• New Twitter feed for xsis. This replaces the old panel and will consist of the same updates, downtime and maintenance notices. Exciting stuff for people who like their news dull, dorky and under 140 characters. Follow us @xsis.
• Semi-secret project, watch this space.
• The delightfully named Mailbomb, which is a long overdue overhaul to our email marketing system. It’s looking good and should be ready for takers in about a month. Take a peek here – (preview pic).
• iPhone Apps. All the ‘cool’ web-types are into this thing in a big way so we’ve gone ahead and registered as an official developer. Stefan and Daniel are heading this up for us, so be ready for MaxGen’s app offering when the version 3.0 iPhones are released sometime in June.
• A new design for this very website. Almost 2 years we’ve been rocking this look now, and while it’s still passable, it is definitely time we knock it up a notch. We’ve been passing concepts round for a couple of weeks now and are finally on the right track.

Just a heads up about our Christmas hours:

We’ll be out of the office from the 23rd of December and back again from the 5th of January. During that time we’ll still be responding to all urgent support calls and emails.

Have a great Christmas and New Years everyone, catch you all next year.

A delightful little acronym that I’ve noticed popping up more and more is this one: SaaS (apparently the last ‘s’ is capitalised but the a’s are not).

The ever-useful www.acronymfinder.com was kind enough to fill me in

Unsure and unconvinced I hit up Wikipedia.

There’s a lot of words on that page. Nice guy that I am I persevered so you don’t have to – long story short, it means Web application.

What followed was an interesting conversation with myself. Take a look at the related articles in both the Wiki pages for SaaS and Web application. What do you find? An outrageous number of buzzwords. And yet industry types wonder why non-web folk can switch off during a slang-laden speech. In part I think it’s because developers feel the need to apply an overly complex label to every facet of our business (the social retardation doesn’t help either I guess).

Case in point: Web 2.0. Personally I think it serves as little more than a phrase that budding valley boys can use when pitching to VC’s (money men). Web 2.0 represents the online business model without a business model, not a distinct technological evolution that certain pundits claim it to be. And now we have SaaS, and the NZ Herald dumbing down the Wiki page in a Telecom advertorial. Because if there’s any company that needs more money from public fear, uncertainty and doubt; its clearly Telecom.

We’re only human here at MaxGen. I’m sure on occasion our clients completely ignore our jargon – and fair enough too. We do however try our best to keep it simple and in plain English. Something that we feel isn’t too difficult to accomplish when you have a decent grasp of customer needs and wants.

Long time no see, with good reason though.

Catch up time:
Last month, both Dan and myself were fortunate enough to be invited to speak to a couple of very different groups of people.

First was a conference held by Tristan Nickless of Word by Mouth and the collective crew of Speech Pathology Australia and the New Zealand Speech-language Therapists’ Association. It was great to speak to a bunch of interested owners of private speech therapy practices about the pros (no cons here) of getting a Website.

A week or so later, we met up with the emerging talent out of Botany Downs Secondary College. First off, what a sweet complex. The school has only been around a few years and has already been labelled as the ‘learning institution of the future’, surely thanks in part to the progressive teachings of Mr. Enda McKenna (head of IT). During the hour or so we spoke we covered a few topics including working with clients, design principles, SEO and general traps for young players.

Couple of pics below:

Big thanks to both groups, was our pleasure to bore you all to tears.

Stay tuned this week and next for some updates to the blog as we:

- Unveil the big projcet that’s been keeping us from posting regularly
- Introduce a new weekly feature
- Spew miscellaneous trite

It’s been a while since our last blog post. Not going to lie – we haven’t had much to rant about. I’ve been kicking around a few ideas, all to no avail. But I have a gem for you today.

Last week I hear that exciting jingle of new mail entering my inbox.

“Whoever could be emailing me?”, I think to myself (note: for dramatic purposes only, I don’t really think things like that to myself).

Just so happens it was Mara Fischer. Mara Fischer from Fischer IT. Fischer IT in Brazil. Apparently that’s her below:

And this is the email that Mara sent me:

“Huh?”.

Sure enough, “Fischer Internet Technologies” have copied our Website design. Fair enough, it is gorgeous. If I ran a sub-par Web design company I’d probably do the same. Take a look for yourself and see if they improved on the original – http://www.fischerit.com.br/. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised displeased. It’s alright Mara, we can’t all be good Web designers.

Boys and girls,

In the coming weeks we’re gonna have various MaxGen Media team members posting in this very blog what they know about certain Web technologies. This is going to coincide the our release of the videos in the Touch section (which are admittedly taking longer than expected). For example, at one stage someone will make a post regarding Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and what it means for you, the Web consumer. Then I’ll get one of the boys to give you a run down on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and why tableless Websites are more better than the other kind. Either way these PSAs will be in plain English and will be intended to help you better understand what we do at MaxGen.

So yeah, James Brown singing Sunny.

Afternoon team.

Big hello to visitors from the various CSS gallery sites that we’ve submitted our new design to. Hope you’re liking the look. We’re still going to implement the switchable themes eventually, but we aren’t calling that priority number one. Those videos I mentioned in the last post should be up shortly, so you wont have to hear my voice much longer.

Anyways, here’s something I came across the other day. Kiwi “folk parody” duo Flight of the Conchords have a deal with HBO in the states to air their show in whats going to be the hole left when The Sopranos finishes up for good in a couple of weeks time. Big shoes to fill. Either way, the pilot below has promise. Classic deadpan stuff.

It’s taken a bit longer than we thought, but MaxGen Media site (5.0?) is all livened up, chock full tasty treats for you to sink your Web-hungry teeth into. We’re gonna be slowly but surely adding the videos to the Touch section, which is essentially a run through of the basics of XSIS. One part tutorial, two parts explanation, all parts awesome and youtubey. Yeah I know the first video is a bit amateur night but it’s more or less a placeholder until the fancy ones are done.

We’re also going to be updating the Work page soon with some of the more recent sites we’ve been working on. If we can pry ourselves away from Guitar Hero 2 that is.

Forgot to mention, at this stage this site hasn’t been officially launched yet. So if you’ve found yourself here somehow, you’re premature. Get over to the current MaxGen Media site. And don’t come back ’till we’re done testing, which should be around the 9th of May. 11th of May.

In the meantime, here’s something to keep you entertained: