Behind every successful project there is a set of really awesome people.

A McDonald’s cook follow a set of detailed instructions whilst Jamie just pinches in a bit of salt and throws in a little bit of rosemary – within his workspace is a flurry of willy-nilly ingredients tossed aside. In the end we all would come to an agreement that Jamie’s cooking tastes a lot better and much healthier than the stuffs cooked over at McDonald’s.

The same goes to running a project – if you have bad cooks no matter how good and detailed your recipes are the dishes are probably going down the drain (no pun intended).

This is why good people matter in a company – and how we showcase them to the world do too. These people need their credits and some good representation of who they are and how they look like. This is where team pages play a role. It would also give our clients an idea of how we look like (so that they can get to know us as well as not to scare them off!).

Without further ado, here I present my list of my favorite Meet the Team pages.

#1 – Caxiamgroup.com

Caxiamgroup is a web design and development company located in Orlando, Florida. They have a carefully assembled team of strategists, designers, developers, programmers & marketers. Check out their Meet the Team page.

There is an attractive use of slider at the top of the page showing their team members categorized based on the transition from Creative to Technical team.

Everyone in the team is shown in three different poses as a way to show them that they are more than what they do at Caxiamgroup – for example Brian here, aside from a User Experience Designer, he is also a sweet family guy.

Everyone gets to describe themselves in a set of keywords under their profile picture(s).

… along with some extra bits of random information accompanying their profile.

#2- Nordkapp.fi

Nordkapp is a group of experienced designers, strategists and technologists from Helsinki, Finland. Even the homepage looks stunningly smart already.

Click on any of the link on top and you will be directed to the page using our favorite parallax scrolling effect.

The secret also lies in such strong copy to describe their team.

The profile info is laid out so simple yet packs a punch. Not to mention (again), nice photographs too.

#3- In2media.com

In2media is a digital agency hailing all the way from Copenhagen, Denmark. Established in 1994, the agency produces campaigns, corporate sites, brand channels, rich media sites, applications, and transaction sites as part of their solutions to strengthen the relations between clients and users.

In general, click over any of those links and you will see that they have employed some cool CSS3 animations. The same goes when you hover the images, details and sliders in their Meet The Team section.

These are just probably some of the Meet the Team pages that caught my eye, so if you have some other suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments section.

(P/s: Check out our Meet the Team page!)

The post Showcase: Meet the Team pages appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Parallax? Well son, elaborate.

If you must know, parallax scrolling effect is like the coolest magic trick to hit the web design shores at the moment. Before this it was used widely in video games for years. According to Line25, the effect became popular when it was implemented in the background of Silverback app website. Back then it was only used as an Easter egg – visible only when the browser is resized. Now the effect has since evolved and seen as part of a scrolling feature of a web site, where multiple backgrounds seem to move at different speeds.

Hm, I am intrigued.
But how does it work?

You are lucky. Here I have in my sleeve is a showcase of three of my favorite websites with this effect – let me show you how awesome it is. Don’t only take my word for it – please also click on the links and experience it for yourself.

#1 – 360 Long Street Zurich

Concept and design by Hinderling Volkart, Zürich, Switzerland.

If you are being observant after you are done picking your jaw off the floor, you would notice that 360 Long Street Zürich is filled with eye-catching elements. It is another one of those little big details discovery in user experience.

These bubbles in red animate as you encounter them by scrolling through the street along the way. Click on the information underlined and you will be taken to another realm – for example, another person’s room where you can further explore his/her room by more scrolling and listen to his/her favorite music.

The icon on the top right of the browser will let you experience the street life in Zürich whether it is day or night. And if you are careful enough to notice, every people we see on the streets have their faces blurred.

The parallax utilization in this website is made by extracting images from a video scene. When scrolling started, the menu on the right screen will fade out and animated video images will appear until video ends. A high resolution image will  appear when scrolling stops.

As you scroll, flying bubbles will move from the bottom to the top, in left and right curve directions.

#2 – Cultural Solutions UK

Concept and design by Hoohaa Design.

Cultural Solutions UK is one of the websites with parallax scrolling effect that I had my eye on. Staying true to the nature of a designer, I could not help noticing some eye-catching elements implemented in this website.

… like these cute icons distribution to the buttons.

Or the fact that the animated background will follow the cursor along the header. (You have to give this a try yourself to see how it works.)

Not to forget the noticeable heading designed with good color contrast and excellent choice in typography.

You gotta love the scrolling news ticker for its Twitter feed too!

Unlike 360 Long Street Zürich website, the parallax utilization for Cultural Solutions UK is not that heavy and complicated. The effect is mostly applied to the menu buttons, but it is enough to add that wow factor to the website.

#3 – Smart USA

Concept and design by Smart USA itself.

I believe this is my favorite out of all three. Everything in the website – the title, the description and the visuals are so appealing you wish you had worked in this.

How the parallax effect works in here that as you scroll in the homepage, the car would zoom in closer to you. In fact, most of the navigations are done by scrolling, but if you get tired of doing so, you can always click the buttons in dots at the right corner of the site.

Cool! So, how do I learn how to achieve this effect?

Parallax scrolling effect is done with the help of well-defined images, jQuery and CSS3. There are many tutorials you could find around the web – among these are ones done by WebDesign Shock, Richard Shepherd and Theme Forest. You could also go see behind-the-scene works that goes into the making of Nike Better World website, the pioneer of parallax scrolling effect in web design.

Awesome! I will go create one now!

Good luck!

The post Parallax Is The New Black appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

You know it was meant to be the day I decided to acquire my first iPhone ever. It was a beautiful sunny day somewhere in 2009 and I was queueing up with a handful of others at the Apple store, giddy to own a newly launched iPhone 3G. Once the shiny new wonder machine found its place in the curves of my palms, I was at awe. I spent hours testing out the features, guided with the instructions manual (which was pretty brief anyway) and many many bytes of Googled web pages. I slept clutching it to sleep. It was love at first touch.

When you fell in love and the feeling was reciprocated (yes the iPhone loved me back, I was sure of it), you began the stage of getting to know each other. As with many other Apple devotees, the collection would extend. I got myself a Macbook Pro 15″, an iPhone 4 (in yet another lengthy queue outside the Apple store), an iPad 2, an iPod Nano as well as a couple of other accessories. I once had a sleek iMac 21″ and traded it for my stark gorgeous Macbook Pro, which further enabled me to go as mobile as possible with its durability and brilliant battery life, not to forget its steely performance.

What made me would never turn back was when I surprised my girlfriend with an iPod Nano for her birthday present. The look on her face was priceless – and I knew I had a friend for life in Apple – both the products and its vision.

My journey as an Apple fanboy began!

But what am I rambling about – of course, this is not about me. What I initially wanted to convey was the introduction of iOS5 and how it changed my life. Much to the chagrin of my fellow teammates who are mostly Androiders, I kept chattering about the features until Zana the project manager twisted my arm and told me to pen this blog post down to share my take on iOS5. A little bit late to the iOs5 blog updating bandwagon, but here goes.

iCloud? iLike!

Notifications center

Notifications used to be sent in a popup window in the middle of the device – and there was no collation of all notifications. With notifications center placed on top of the screen (you can customize this in Settings) I will no longer miss any notifications. With a single swipe on the top of the screen, all the notifications for my chosen applications will be shown there.

iCloud

iCloud refers to Apple’s newest cloud service of which you could store your music, apps, photos, calendars, documents and many more. The service then will wirelessly push all of these to every device you own – no more cables needed. And it comes with a free 5 GB account!

iMessage

Move over, BBM – here comes iMessage! Much like BBM, iMessage is messaging application between iPhone/ iPod/ iPad users. For interaction between iPhone users, you can use the phone number of your iPhone and the Apple ID linked to the device, while for iPod and iPad, you can use the Apple ID – much like the existing Facetime.

Twitter integration

My traditional way of sharing articles from mobile Safari to Twitter is by having to copy the URL first and then paste it into the Twitter status update field. With this feature, I can share articles to Twitter in a single click.

Safari Reader

Safari Reader feature offers a less-distraction reading experience on my Apple devices. Mobile Safari now also has Tab options on much like the traditional web Safari.

Wireless sync to Macbook/PC over wifi connection

Perhaps this is my most favorite of all. Let’s say when I update my music library, I don’t have to plug in my iPhone/iPad to my Macbook/PC to sync the files, instead I would just leave and it will automatically sync – for example during overnight charging, so next morning I will have my music library updated in my iPhone/ iPad. Yay!

Multitasking gestures on iPad

By just using four or five fingers, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, pinch to return to the Home screen, and swipe left or right to switch between apps. Isn’t it cool? You can see it in action here.

Reminder app

I have been told I forget a lot, with the reminder app on iOs5, I can keep track of every tasks complete with alarms. This actually helps a lot especially to remind me about my design milestones.

Maps with alternate routes

I no longer have to stick to just one route to drive to one place, the new map which comes in iOs5 offers a couple of alternate routes for me to choose.

Camera

Now you can pinch-to-zoom gestures, and single-tap focus. Then press the volume-up button to snap your photo in the nick of time. No more fiddling with just one button to take pictures and whatnot.

Battery consumption is… meh.

While all things may seem all rainbow and ponies, a couple of things do come up in my cons list for iOs5.

First would be the noticeable, significant battery drain than during the usage in the previous operating systems (here’s something which could help). Second would be lack of design change – the iOs interface is looking really long in the tooth. The last one would be that there is no improvement in voice control at all, and I say this is a shame.

Other than that, everything works pretty much dandy for me.

“Siri, can you do the designing for me while I go play Battlefield 3?”

Last but no least, here comes the personal assistant with attitude named Siri on iPhone4s.  Siri could be a reason enough to buy the new iPhone 4S. Watch Siri in action and read her antics at Shit Siri Says.

( Photo credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

The post S in iOs5 stands for ‘sweet’! appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

What I‘m going to share with everyone is not about the present days of my hometown but more interestingly, about the old days of Kajang based on the first-hand account of my father. That‘s right, he was also born in Kajang in the late 60‘s. During his childhood, he was raised by his mother and late grandmother together with his brother, uncle and aunt in a house located in a village named Sungai Kantan.

Kajang town circa 60's

According to my father, during his childhood, Kajang was a quiet town where not many things happened during the day other than people doing routines to support their families. Then, there was a “roundabout” road in the middle of the town, where Metro Kajang is now. My father told me that his late uncle, not wearing any helmet, would ride his vintage Ducati bike very fast around the “roundabout” to impress his friends with his bike skills. Nearby, was the famous “satay” seller in Kajang called Tasmin and the price for a stick of satay during that time was only 15 cents. The meat was skewed with veins of coconut palm frond instead of bamboo.

There were two big cinemas in Kajang town. One was built by the British before the Second World War, which was then turned into a school by the Japanese during their occupation of Malaya and made everyone sing the Japanese national anthem every morning. Thus it got named the National Cinema. Back then when movie tickets were really cheap, it was one of my father‘s favorite places to visit with his mates on Saturdays.

The other cinema was the Sun Cinema which was also located nearby the National Cinema. It was built after the independence of Malaya most probably in the mid 60‘s. Today both cinemas were no longer around. The National cinema was demolished to make way for Metro shopping complex while the Sun cinema has been converted to a Buddhist temple.

Despite the rapid development in Kajang, we can still see buildings that were built in the 1920‘s. It is because the Kajang Municipal council has decided not to demolish the old buildings to conserve the rich heritage of the town. Over time, this introduced congestions. Well you can imagine the combinations of old and modern buildings being “patched” up together in a small town, where the roads are mostly not systematic, the populations grow in rapid figures, causing massive traffic jams most of the time. Fortunately, now since they have built the Silk highway, the traffic jam has been reduced quite significantly.

In the outskirt of Kajang town back in those days, lays a few villages where the Malays, Chinese and Indians dwells. The Sungai Chua village was mostly populated by Chinese, Sungai Kantan and Sungai Ramal villages by the Malays and Kajang estate, Brummah estate by the Indians. They were all separated by the British according to their races. Now, most of the villages have been replaced by new housing estates and shopping complex. During my father‘s teenage years, he used to go fishing at old mining pools near Sungai Kantan. He said, you can choose any pools you like, and fish whatever fresh water fish that you like. Further up from the old mining pools there was a stream which the locals called “jeram” that my father and his friends used to swim together and enjoyed the tranquility of the surroundings.

That was yester years, a long time ago. Now they were gone forever. The hills and greeneries have been replaced by highways. The old mining pools have been filled with land and housing estates were built on top of it. Last time, during the day, you can feel the freshness of air around you. You can drink the fresh water from the “jeram” without even boiling it. You can easily catch all sort of fresh water fishes like the Tilapia and Lampam. Now no more. “Oh! How I missed that time so much” said my father.

As I said earlier, I was born in 1990, and there isn‘t much I can tell about modern-day Kajang than the information that is in the Internet. The Kajang which I am living now is no longer green or tranquil.  All that is left are the old buildings which are the main cause of the jams. Besides that everything has changed.

Well that‘s a bit about Kajang, now and before.  I do hope we cherish our green earth that we lived in for a better living tomorrow.

(gorgeous photography by Yummy Corner and Kajang Town, Selangor, Malaysia)

The post A City of Our Own Part III: Kajang appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.