RD2 is actively seeking a web application developer. Come join our team!

We have a focus and passion for building beautiful applications that help our clients connect with their communities. Right now, we have a place for someone who can work with an awesome team and who can inspire us with their talents. Please apply if you:

• Have a passion to learn and teach
• Have been told you have an innovative mind
• Don’t have to say how good you are because you just know it
• Are relentless about seeing great user experiences come to fruition
• Know how to make it happen with today’s technologies

Adding to our team is no small task. Our environment is paramount to our success, and finding the right fit is something we know will not come fast. We’re committed to building upon our momentum, but know this is more of a marathon than a sprint. We’re looking for Web Application Developers who share our focus on creating great user experiences. We hope to provide a home for someone who is not afraid to share their experience in a team atmosphere.

High Level Experience:

A thorough understanding and experience with web technologies such as HTML/CSS, JavaScript and PHP/MySQL are obviously required. We also have positions available for someone with a thorough understanding of Microsoft’s .Net and SharePoint.

Additional and Important Details:

• Full understanding and experience working in software SLC
• Experience in RDBMS SQL in mySQL and SQL Server
• Ability to integrate solutions with up-stream and down-stream systems
• Ability to read and understand functional requirements
• Ability to communicate effectively and clearly
• Experience in system design
• Experience working with and developing for a variety of content management systems
• Experience working closely with a QA team or have been a part of an experienced QA team
• Experience working with web services technology such as XML and SOAP
• Experience in Microsoft SharePoint

If interested, please forward your resumes to jobs@rd2inc.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Today we pushed the launch button on the Shopping.com blog. The blog is called WhatsInStoreBlog.com. It’s a blog for shoppers featuring “Tips, Trends and Things We Love.” I don’t want to say too much in this post because I am careful not to steal the thunder from our team….they were the ones who ultimately delivered. My job is just to brag on them. So, I will encourage them to tell you about the ideas and the process for how this came to be.

Also, it was great working with a new Blogstar, Wendy Sept. Wendy has great energy and was really great to work with. You’ll be seeing a lot from her if you pay attention to the WhatsInStoreBlog.com blog.

On January 3rd, Chris Griego posted a very thought provoking article about the need to create a “new standardized dummy text” that goes beyond the general paragraph display of Lorem Ipsum. This was at the beginning of a flurry of conversation at RD2 concerning this idea.

I discussed this idea with Chris in order to see where he was coming from since designers and developers look at the world through different lenses. I wanted to get to the bottom of what brought this idea up in the first place. What I began to realize is that creating a new “dummy text” could be a way to further shrink the wall that separates designers and coders. This new Lorem Ipsum would be a great way to further meld the gap between design and development by giving designers not only rich content including paragraphs, lists, hyperlinks, images, etc., but to take it a step further and also include other standard elements like form elements and even standard sized faux browser windows that help the designer stay within the correct parameters from the beginning. Having every element represented gives us the power at the beginning of a project to define which elements need to be included and styled. Or even whether we have the time within the project parameters to style standard elements like form elements, a specific issue that is often overlooked at the beginning. From there the designer can be sure to include every element and will eliminate guesswork as the project proceeds, increasing project efficiency.

So this Lorem Ipsum 2.0 document will be the skeleton with which to build websites. Every “bone” will be included and then we will simply put the skin on and shape the site into it’s unique form while keeping the elements that support this form in tact… from the beginning. That way we don’t create a figure and forget to add the spleen.

Stay tuned for updates on our progress on this important initiative.

The Subversion development team recently released version 1.4 of the Subversion client and server, which includes some handy improvements.

• `svn diff` can now optionally ignore whitespace and differences between platform end of line styles when computing the difference between files.
• OS X Keychain (OS X’s password store) support.
• Significant working-copy performance improvements.
• File size improvements when working with binary files.
• A handful of new command line options.
• More than 40 bugfixes.

It’s important to note that the Subversion development team warns that the working copy storage format, i.e. the “.svn” folders, has changed for 1.4, so if you are doing something along the lines of reading a working copy stored on an external drive from two different computers, both will need to be updated to Subversion 1.4. This limitation does not extend to clients using a server-side repository.

Most of our development these days happens on Macs, some G4 and some Intel. Either way, Metissian, the source for OS X binary builds of Subversion, hasn’t released new builds of 1.4 yet. I built my own copy of 1.4 using Dan Benjamin’s building instructions for Subversion on OS X for a PowerBook G4, simply substituting downloading the 1.4 release instead of 1.3.1.

However, recently I’ve transitioned to a shiny new MacBook Pro. When I went to use the same instructions to build Subversion 1.4, the configure step complained that I was missing the Apache Portable Runtime, a dependency of Subversion’s. Starting with Subversion 1.4, the Subversion team is distributing the dependencies separately form the Subversion source code. Once you download both Subversion 1.4.0 and its dependencies and extract them both to the same folder, Dan Benjamin’s original instructions work seamlessly.

As of late, I’ve been working with the team on some SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Through all the keywords and graphs and educated guesses, I’ve learned a few life lessons along the way that I thought I would share:

• You can’t be everything to everybody.

  On the web: Find the keywords you really care about and make sure you have solid related content.
  In life: Find the things you really care about and work hard to achieve those.

• Be yourself.

  On the web: Don’t try to be what you aren’t. Be honest with yourself and don’t add content for the sake of content.
  In life: Don’t try to be who you aren’t. Be honest with yourself and don’t add excess for the sake of excess.

• Don’t let outside forces disturb what’s inside of you.

  On the web: Don’t let SEO changes disturb what you have. Design and relevant, value-added content are most important.
  In life: Don’t let the outside world disturb what you have inside. Integrity and strength of character are most important.

Ok, maybe I sound a little like 7th grade Health class… but I am learning a lot of valuable things here at RD2.

Until next time.

Last Friday was a pretty exciting day at RD2, and, having only been with the company for a month and this being my first “real” job in the web design world, it probably made it that much more exciting.

We are very close to launching a site, so we are finishing up the Quality Assurance process. Some very interesting issues arose Friday. I wasn’t directly involved in the team that built the site, as it was already in progress when I came here about a month ago, but I helped on occasion when an extra hand was needed, and was involved in the QA team.

In the morning we had a couple of issues with WordPress and how it handled a link to a category with no posts in it. When choosing a category with no posts, WordPress returned a 404 page that had no style or information about the error. So Chris Griego did some surgery on the PHP that handles 404 errors and fixed it to look and see if the category is present and send it to the category page saying there aren’t any posts in this category yet. Thinking that was the end, we felt good and went to lunch. (more…)

Have you ever witnessed someone surfing the web with images turned off? There’s a setting to let you surf the web with images turned off, at least, last I checked (about five years ago). Even years ago, I would notice friends and acquaintances who would do just that. As if to create a more scannable and easy to understand web experience. From a design perspective, I was just shocked…
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