I was delighted when I ran across a new website yesterday. Zoom Creates has been abuzz with talk of product development for the last 6 months. We’ve spoke of very little else, in fact. You see, we were given the opportunity to partner in the development of a new consumer product and we got to walk through it from inception to branding through to website creation, print materials, launch parties and events and the list goes on. So, you might call us experts. This is hardly the first product launch we’ve been a part of, but certainly the first product we’ve helped create from the get-go. We are thrilled, to say the least.
While skimming the web for product development research-ness, I came across Quirky.com. I was immediately intrigued because this is a site and notion like no other. It is social media brainstorm meets “let’s invent something” for a glorious result. Without running the risk of explaining the idea badly, I’ll defer to the “Learn” page on Quirky where they say the following about their process:
“Quirky is a social product development company. Your product ideas come in, the Quirky community and team work on them, we sell the product worldwide, and then we share the revenue with the inventor and all influencers.
By enabling this fluid conversation between our global community of influencers and Quirky’s expert product design team, we are able to accomplish what was once unthinkable: bringing one brand new product concept from sketch to store each week.”
Users are able to take part on a few different levels, from giving their opinion on an idea for a product, to submitting an idea for consideration to purchasing a developed item on pre-sale prior to production. Personally, I find the concept to be fabulous on so many levels. For more information because there is truly SO MUCH info out there, please visit Quirky.com and while you’re at it, pick up the Jus, a nifty little juicer that squeezes the juice right into the attached pitcher. Woop!
We here at Zoom Creates love giving people the option to maintain their own websites once we are done building them. One of our favorite CMS platforms is MODx. It’s based on PHP, is open source, and is extremely flexible. Today I’m going to talk to you about the basics of building a HTML based template.
In a phenomenon bringing both the craft brewing and geek world together (once again), Portland, Oregon’s own 
)
