August 31, 2010

Postulez dès maintenant : Pro-Bono 2010

by Warren

Cela fait déjà quelques années que Plank adopte une politique officieuse qui consiste à entreprendre un projet annuel Pro-Bono.  Lorsqu’une cause nous passionne, il nous fait plaisir d’y collaborer afin de faire une différence. Nous avons travaillé sur divers projets que nous avons jugés importants et auxquels nous pensions pouvoir contribuer de façon positive, notamment les associations à but non lucratif, les cinéastes et les musiciens, entre autres.

Cette année, nous avons choisi un chemin plus officiel quant au projet annuel Pro-Bono, et plutôt que d’attendre passivement, nous vous posons les questions suivantes:

« Êtes-vous une entreprise, un artiste ou une association à but non lucratif à court d’argent? Cela vous intéresse-t-il d’entreprendre un projet important en ligne avec une équipe de travail professionnelle et expérimentée? »

Si la réponse est oui, veuillez SVP nous soumettre une courte lettre (une page suffit) qui explique en quoi consiste votre projet, ce que vous désirez accomplir en ligne ainsi que les façons dont vous croyez pouvoir découvrir et tirer avantage de notre expertise.

Quelles sortes de projets devriez-vous soumettre?

À vrai dire, nos critères de sélection sont tout à fait subjectifs.  Nous allons appuyer un projet qui suscite notre enthousiasme, un projet dont les objectifs fixés sont convaincants et bien définis, et naturellement, un projet qui a de bonnes chances de réussite.

Nous prenons dès maintenant les demandes jusqu’au 15 septembre.  Ensuite, nous sélectionnerons un projet sur une période de deux semaines, suivi d’une réunion qui aura lieu avec l’équipe choisie, en espérant tomber d’accord; nous vous en ferons part avant le 1er octobre, 2010.

Êtes-vous intéressés?  Envoyez-nous un courriel à info@plankdesign.com avec le sujet-rubrique « Pro-Bono 2010 ».  Nous vous garantissons une lecture méticuleuse de vos demandes et espérons contacter la plupart d’entre vous directement.

Si vous avez des commentaires ou des questions concernant les demandes, veuillez les poster ici et nous les adresserons aussitôt que possible.

Au plaisir d’avoir de vos nouvelles.

Posted in Clients, Plank | Post A comment

Apply Now: Pro-Bono 2010

by Warren

It’s been quite a few years now that Plank has had an unofficial policy of taking on an annual Pro-Bono project. When we run into a cause that the team feels passionate about we are happy to get involved to make a difference. From non-profits, to filmmakers to musicians we have offered our time for projects that we felt were important and that we knew we could have a major impact on.

This year, we’ve decided to go a bit more official with our yearly pro-bono project and rather than wait for something to stumble into our laps, ask you, the internet:

“Are you an organization, artist or non-profit looking to do something important online and want to work with a great team? If you do, please let us know.”

If that sounds like you then please submit a short letter (one page will do) explaining what the project is about, what you want to do online and why you think you could benefit from our expertise.

What kind of projects should be submitted?

I’ll be honest and say the selection criteria for what we are going to take on is completely subjective. We are going to choose something that excites us. We are going choose a project that we can succeed at. We are going to take on a project that has definitive goals that are well defined.

We are taking applications starting immediately and will be closing off submissions September 15th.  We will then select the project within the following 2 weeks, set up a meeting with the selected team and hopefully come to an agreement and tell all of you about it by October 1st, 2010.

Are you interested? If so, just send an email to info@plankdesign.com with the subject heading “Pro-Bono 2010”. We promise to read over all applications carefully and hope to be back in touch with all or most of you directly.

If you have any comments or questions about the application, post them here and we will address them as quickly as possible!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

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August 27, 2010

WCMTL this weekend

by Steve

Quick reminder that Plank will be attending WordCamp MTL this weekend. It’s a great event (we loved it last year) and has many angles on WordPress covered.

Follow along on Twitter at topic #wcmtl all weekend if you can’t get there. If you can make it, keep a look out for Mitch, Patrick, Emerson or Ameila and say hi.

wordcampmontreal.org | register here

Posted in Conferences, Events, Montreal, Wordpress | Post A comment

CSV plugin for CakePHP

by Mitchell

CSVer: A simple CakePHP plugin for generating CSV files from models. A task that’s common enough on a log of projects.

The code lives over on github. To learn more, there’s a readme you can view.

It’s in it’s infancy, but it does what it needs to, and will hopefully help others.

m.

Posted in CakePHP, Code, PHP | Post A comment

August 23, 2010

Plank blog moves to WordPress 3.0

by Steve

We’ve successfully migrated this blog to WordPress 3.0.

Why you ask? It doesn’t look much different. We had it running on our own custom written code and it worked very well — but as we look to the future, we wanted to move it to a platform that would remain consistent. We have some great plans for the Plank site and this move to WP will allow us to focus on the rest of the site without worry about this slice.

Some of the other numerous benefits:

  • Some of the world’s best SPAM control,
  • Plug-ins and a wonderful development community,
  • A simple to update framework for our future plans,
  • A publication system with varying levels of complexity/control to get everyone at the company involved in our online voice.

Over the past few years it has become a de-facto choice for many of our clients, and we find ourselves often working it into their solutions/structure and plans. Plug-ins such as WPML have made it much more viable in Québec/Canada where many of our clients have bilingual sites.

Summed up — we love WordPress.

Onward and upward with the help of great tools.

Posted in Opensource, PHP, Plank, Social Media, Wordpress | 3 Comments

August 12, 2010

BFF2010

by Steve

Plank is a proud sponsor of the 10th Annual Bicycle Film Festival. It starts tonight and runs through the weekend (August 12th – 14th).

Check the full festival schedule here and watch the Trailer on YouTube.

Posted in Events, Friends, Montreal | Post A comment

August 2, 2010

X and X and X marks the spot

by Mitchell

When it comes to mapping, here at Plank we’ve come to lean on the wonderful php-google-map-api class.

One of the projects we’ve recently been working on is Culture Days. It’s a project to have a weekend this fall across Canada where people can participate in a variety of free, locally-organized cultural events. Naturally, we wanted to show a map displaying all the locations of various events around the country.

One issue we were encountered is what happens when there are many events all going on in the same area throughout the day. At certain zoom levels, we ended up with an unusable mess of markers. This is where the excellent MarkerClusterer comes to the rescue.

Yet one issue still remained. In many cases, there were a lot of events happening throughout the day at one specific location. For example, up in Flin Flon, Manitoba, there are 11 events going on throughout the day at the Flin Flon School & Community Center. No matter how much you zoom into the map, you would still end up with 11 markers, all stacked one on top of the other, unable to get information on any event besides the top one. This would not do.

So, we added the functionality we needed – the ability to show the information of all Markers in a Cluster once you are zoomed closer than a certain level. You can see it in action on Manitoba.

In the interest of helping those in the same boat as us, we’ve put our changes to those libraries up on our github account. For more technical information about the changes we did, view the readme’s in their respective repos.

Plank fork of the PHP Google Maps Api project
Plank fork of the MarkerClusterer project

Posted in Clients, Code, Geo, Github, Javascript, Opensource | Post A comment

July 26, 2010

Shopify TextMate bundle

by Mitchell

Recently, a client of ours decided on Shopify for their store solution.

While Shopify allows a lot of freedom for designing your themes, all interaction with your theme files on their server generally requires going through the backend web interface. So, you can work on your IDE of choice ( TextMate in my case ) and then copy/paste your work into a textfield and submit. The process can become tedious, especially if you are trying to debug or tweak a file to get the layout just right.

Shopify offers a pretty robust API which supports the GETting and PUTting of assets. To that end, I’ve put together a shopify.tmbundle which allows downloading/uploading of theme assets from within TextMate. Next best thing to having FTP access. Thought some other people might find it useful.

You can read the full details, but in a nutshell, the bundle offers:

  • Download Theme: Will download the entire theme from Shopify. Useful when you just getting started to download the whole Theme.
  • Update Current File From Shopify : Will replace the contents of the file you are working on with the file from Shopify.
  • Update Selected Files from Shopify : Will fetch the files you have selected in the Project Window from Shopify.
  • Send Asset to Shopify ( ⌘U ): Will save the document you are working on, and upload to shopify. Used for text assets.
  • Send Selected Files to Shopify : Will upload any files you have selected in the Project Panel to Shopify. This is what you want to use to upload a bunch of files at once.
    feedback welcome.

(Thanks to Steve B. for the fun graphic)

Posted in Code, Github, Opensource | Post A comment

May 4, 2010

Hotdocs 2010 – Day One

by Warren

After a chat over lunch at the Rivoli a few weeks ago with a super talented friend / acquaintance / colleague of mine I got it in my head that it may be interesting for Plank / Me to attend Hotdocs in Toronto this year. I hemmed and hawed about it for a week or so (since I’m not a traditional ceo/president schmoozer/type) but after talking it through with Sarah (ahem, she told me I had to go) we all agreed it was a good idea.

Our goal with attending Hotdocs was really based on a few simple things. One, learn a bit more about what documentary filmmakers in Canada are struggling with (and from what I heard, it’s “new media”). Two, learn all about the different ways that these filmmakers are being supported (the NFB, Bell Media Fund, CMF, Tax Credits etc.). Three, figure out how we can help and get more involved in the Canadian film industry. And finally, and most importantly, meet some smart people and see some good films.

While I enjoyed a few chance meetings with some interesting filmmakers and a head’s up on where the NFB sees it’s focus now, the most interesting to me was the Canadian Media Fund Mini-Meeting in the afternoon. The panelist was quite strong, articulate and honest but as we all know, with a brand new fund some questions were left unanswered. This being Hotdocs, one of the most contentious parts of the panel was the presentation of the POV stream. In all honesty, while most filmmakers in the room saw the deadline and options with this fund to be a real problem, I actually came out of it with a new idea for Plank and an interesting way we can help out Canadian documentary filmmakers. I get the vision of what the government and CMF are trying to do and I’m ready to embrace it. Wanna hear more? Email me and I’ll let you know what’s mulling around in my brain.

I’ll definitely post about the Plank "idea" once I have it organized. I may hold ideas close to my chest, but not that close.

After one illustrious day, all goals met except one, going to see a film! Let’s see what day 2 holds.

Highlights of the day

  • Chance meetings with 4 different and talented filmmakers
  • Realizing I may have a solution to the POV CMF problem
  • A beautiful, clear, warm day in Toronto
  • A chance to take a LONG walk from my hotel to Hotdocs first thing in the morning
  • Yay for iPhone tethering

Down points of the day

  • Wifi fail @ Hotdocs
  • I went over to Caplansky’s delicatessen for lunch and it was closed for spring cleaning. Oy! Such bad timing!
  • I understand the game they all play, but do the prices at hotels really need to be 2X what you would pay anywhere else?

See you tomorrow!

Posted in Canada, Conferences, Events, Film, Toronto | Post A comment

April 20, 2010

Culture Days goes national

by Allen

Plans for Culture Days, a free annual event that invites people to celebrate and explore arts and culture in every province and territory in Canada, were unveiled today at events across the country. And Plank is pleased to be a part of it, with the launch of the next phase of the Culture Days website. Plank is excited see how Canadians will use the website to get involved in preparation for the September 2010 event.

The original launch of the Culture Days site in November, 2009 was an excellent source of information about the Culture Days movement and what it was all about. With the launch of this next Phase today, the information available has grown exponentially. More importantly, the updated site is all about interested Canadians organizing individual Culture Days events in their home cities and towns across the country. Site users are able to easily enter information and details about the free-activites they plan to offer during Culture Days this fall.

For those not organizing events but wanting to be involved, today’s launch has plenty for them as well. All the events will be easily searchable so people can quickly find events that are of interest to them. The Culture Days Blog provides people with the latest updates in their provinces as well as lots of other useful information from the Culture Days Movement. Users can also see a sneak peak of events which have already been organized in provinces across Canada in the Celebration Schedule section of the site. Users can also get updates through an eBulletin, or even be updated by text message. All the latest Culture Days news can be found on the home page or through Twitter.

There are many other ways to get involved as well. Why don’t you try one!

With the launch of this next Phase of the site, the design has been updated to reflect the new “get involved” ethos, as well as harmonize with the print campaign to be launched in May 2010. But the site still has all the hallmarks of a GW Brazier design – visually stimulating and appealing yet clean, with a design that doesn’t take away from the goal for the site which is to find information. If anything, the design makes it easy for users to find the information they need.

So check out the site. More updates are coming and we’ll see you in September!

Culture Days site

More about Plank and Culture Days

Posted in Canada, Clients, Plank | Post A comment