Most anti-Occupy Wall Street posts in the blogosphere recently deal with the character of the protesters. If the writers of these posts can characterize the occupiers as lazy college drop-outs who just want a free ride then they don’t have to confront the dramatic inequality in America today. These characterizations are sideshows that avoid the real...Read More

It’s day three on my new job here at Beehive Media. I’ve mastered my login ID and password for no less than eight applications and feel like a hero. The transition period between my new job of three days and old job of five years is underway, but for now it feels like I’m living...Read More

A week ago today I received an email from Bill Shander, our CEO here at Beehive Media, asking me to set up a Google+ page for the company now that business pages were open to the public. “No problem,” I replied, and I was off. A quick, simple sign-up, enter a bit of information, toss...Read More

The line between cool and creepy is incredibly thin, and yet is one that social media services toe every single day, as they integrate more and more into their users’ lives. It’s a constant battle between providing value to users and keeping from overstepping any boundaries. That line has recently become even thinner, as API’s...Read More

It’s always fun to visit a hip yet swanky eatery in the city. It’s even more fun when that eatery is in Boston’s South End. It’s even more fun when you become VIP’s. When The Beehive Eatery and Bar opened in 2007, they quickly grew in popularity, and people started calling for reservations and directions....Read More

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Few adages are more true (although “there’s good, there’s fast and there’s cheap…pick two” comes pretty close.) I’ve been in business for 17 years. I’ve seen three bad economic downturns, and I’ve seen more than one company implode for lack of attention to the most basic of things:...Read More

This week thousands of people have logged on to Klout to see a most heinous occurrence: their score had dropped! OK, so maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal, but that’s not the sense you would have gotten if you followed the action via Twitter over the past few days. While Klout announced last...Read More

The web has changed a lot since 1991. It’s gotten bigger, prettier (in some cases), fancier and it even does tricks. At its core the purpose has remained the same: to get information to people. What has changed most though is the way users interact with the content; these days that’s called the “User Experience”....Read More

If good content, the web or otherwise, is not of interest to you, you should probably stop reading this post and go find something else to do. If you’re really bored, you could take a 5 minute survey about credibility online for a survey we’re conducting (if that’s more your cup of tea). If, on...Read More

The passing of Apple founder Steve Jobs last week was a seismic event on the Internet. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ became flooded with users’ expressions of admiration and respect for a major technology luminary of our era regardless of their own technological brand preference. A lot of focus has remained on his career achievements, which...Read More

When I first started in IT I had all my obsequious certifications: MCSE, Network +, A+.  At that time, specializing in the web meant you needed to know how to build a web server from the hardware up, setup the web server software, and be able to write some basic HTML. I’ve always loved exploring...Read More

At Beehive Media we often tell clients that when it comes to their ideas about a project, we will only tell them “no” once.  We give our advice but ultimately we’re a service business, and giving the client what they want is our aim.  If we say “no” to something but they disagree, well, the...Read More

Organizations NEED to be heard. It’s called marketing. The dream, of course, is to ride some magical viral wave to the nirvana of endless Retweets, Facebook shares, StumbleUpon referrals, blog mentions, etc. But going viral is not without its risks. Never mind that it’s hard (really really hard) to pull off, it can be dangerous....Read More

We are currently conducting a study on the perception of credibility in the virtual world and how it is shaped by differing factors. Please take the below survey to help us with this research. The survey should only take about 5 minutes. Thanks for participating and check back for more content from Beehive Media and...Read More

What is the first thing that registers when a visitor loads a web page? Even before they’ve begun to perceive any images or what the text says, their brain will register what the colors are. Guess what? You’ve set the mood for your site. Hopefully that mood fits with your content. Site 1: Take a...Read More

Beehive Media was recently awarded the Banker & Tradesman Best of  2011 Gold Award for web design.  According to Banker & Tradesman, “B&T’s Best is our annual tribute to those companies our readers have determined to be, simply, the best at what they do…What it does measure is the loyalty and satisfaction readers have with...Read More

In the latest segment of BeeU we cover some of the basics of Basecamp, the web-based project management tool that we use here at Beehive Media.

I love sports, and just as much as I love sports, I love making sports analogies. To me, the business world is a lot like a baseball game. There are lulls in action, flurries of fast-paced activity, and the constant need to work as a team. Each player has a role and a responsibility, and...Read More

What business, non-profit organization or NGO doesn’t want a comparative edge over its competition? In the ever-burgeoning world of technology, this edge can be as elusive as it is tempting. Bleeding edge technology signifies technology that is extremely new, to the extent of risking both reliability and productivity for the end-user. Adopting such technologies can...Read More

Here at Beehive Media there are certain things that our clients are always asking us about. Sometimes it’s a question about our process, other times it’s a question about some piece of web tech. So we’ve created Beehive University, or BeeU, as a quick and engaging way of answering these questions. BeeU will consist of...Read More

My father is a seemingly limitless fountain of wisdom.  Reading that statement, he would probably quote Socrates and tell me that the only real wisdom is knowing that you know nothing; he would then use that as a springboard to discuss how landscapes are ever-changing and what you once thought was a given is now...Read More

You hear the phrase “less is more” bandied about quite a bit.  In the world of web development it’s an important principle.  At Beehive we use a similar term that comes straight from the world of startups: “minimally viable product.”  The minimally viable product (or MVP) is what you definitely have to have to make...Read More

In certain contexts, the ability to swim happily around a small bowl (metaphorically) and be constantly surprised can be a good thing. For instance, if you’re a goldfish. Or in prison. Or you work on an assembly line. But for the most part, having a short attention span is not a positive attribute, right? According...Read More

W/S Development is one of the largest developers of retail space in the country, with more than 80 shopping centers totaling over 17 million square feet. We developed their corporate web site, a mobile web site and their very successful desktop Property Portfolio – a rich visual interface for presenting portfolio properties to potential lessees....Read More

The Hunt Alternatives Fund works to facilitate social change on the local, national, and global levels through grant making and technical assistance in the field of human services. Beehive Media worked with Hunt to redesign their website and its sub-sites, providing web strategy design, information architecture. Hunt Alternatives Fund programmed the sites internally, the first...Read More

Here is an over-simplified, inadequate description of a general premise of Hinduism:  You’ve probably heard that Hindu’s have millions of Gods right? Well, that’s not really the case in the Western/Christian sense. According to Hinduism there is a universal spirit: Brahman, and everything is a manifestation of Brahman. From there come different Gods, like Vishnu....Read More

The best way to understand data visualization’s effectiveness is to think of how you learned to read. Chances are you started with picture books, where the images conveyed the story to you; the words simply accompanied the images. Much in the same way that Curious George taught you how to read, data visualization can teach...Read More

When your favorite team wins its championship…when it’s been 39 years in the making…when the reason you play that sport is because you first saw that team play almost that long ago…when your city has been able to overcome its sports demons…when it’s been an incredible decade of sports success capped by the ultimate championship…you...Read More

Inspired Magazine has published our 4X4 philosophy for translating knowledge content for the web. It includes the four models for presenting knowledge content, as well as four key components of those models. Check it out and call or email us if we can explain it in more detail for you. And we’re currently working on...Read More

There are a few companies that dominate business in Boston…that are big enough to be nationally known brands…that employ enough people that everyone knows someone who has worked there…that every service company in town has probably worked for at some point. Fidelity is one of those companies. It took more than 16 years in business...Read More

We’ve been helping clients with their interactive strategy, design and development for many many years. And there have been a few major shifts in our industry over those long years. The first occurred when CD-ROMs really were replaced by the web in or around 1998. The next came when the dot com bubble burst and...Read More

Our first Russian language project was just released for an event in St. Petersburg, Russia. The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum needed a platform for communicating key data points and trends for participants at the event. They were enamored with Knowledge Concierge, the platform we developed during a 10-year-long engagement for PricewaterhouseCoopers and World Economic...Read More

Healthways' tagline is "Create a healthier world". One step in that direction is to work with communities on strategies to encourage wellness. We created an application for Boston Consulting Group and World Economic Forum earlier this year that leveraged Healthways data to share statistics on how wellness programs can decrease costs for businesses. This platform was enhanced and expanded to be applicable to communities - allowing a community, such as Shelby County, TN, to see real data about their area to be able to judge how wellness programs could improve health and decrease costs. The interface we built was extremely simple and belies a very complex back-end running calculations against a massive data set. Simplicity masking complexity - just the way we like it!

The Founder Institute, which is somewhere between an executive MBA program and an incubator, is coming to Boston.  I participated in this fantastic program last year during the inaugural session held in Silcon Valley. The program is unique in that participants pay a small fee to attend, and get four months of classes on building...Read More

We recently launched the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development web site. This project was designed by another agency and we did the technical development using Expression Engine, an open source content management system.

We're doubling down on Davos this year, with two different clients and two projects launching for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.  We've been working with PricewaterhouseCoopers for 10 years on KnowledgeConcierge, which this fall evolved into its third incarnation.  We've added some more functionality for Davos, as well as a ton of content.  If...Read More

According to a survey done last January, the technology industry is the most trusted sector among "opinion elites" 35-64.  I'm not sure what this means, but thought I'd share it.  (Using the newest incarnation of KnowledgeConcierge – the site we built for World Economic Forum and PricewaterhouseCoopers and debuting some new features for Davos 2010.)

Making the complex simple.  This is what we have done for our clients for 15 years.  And this was the inspiration for our new web site. Why simplicity?  First, I believe that people want direction.  They want to be guided to what is important, what is worth their time and attention.  This is what is...Read More

I love simple things. I mean simple functionality and simple visually. Google does some things really right. And other things are not at all as simple as they could be. Sometimes their engineers dominate when their design team should have more influence. (Gmail and AdWords interfaces are both good example of this.) But when Google...Read More

This is the request I just posted to Google. I've already made one request, but thought I'd try again: I really really really want an invite. I've already filled this form out. And I'm sure this is just putting me at the end of the line. But maybe, just maybe, there's a human who will...Read More

The new web site for Funders Together to End Homelessness launched today. Funders Together, a national network of foundations and corporations supporting strategic and effective grant making to end homelessness, approached us to design and build the new site to help reinforce their positioning as a center for thought leadership on the subject of homelessness...Read More

After 10 years working with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Economic Forum, it was time for a new concept for a long-standing and successful project, KnowledgeConcierge. This year we redesigned and re-built the site from the bottom up, focusing on the delivery and syndication of FastFacts – charts and graphs of compelling information. The site provides...Read More

PricewaterhouseCoopers commissioned Beehive to leverage its Brand2o platform (platform which enables the user to generate custom marketing materials in PDF, HTML, and Powerpoint formats) to allow its user-base to search and concatenate PDFs from their vast knowledge library. This project combined .NET web services, Flash components, and SQL Server to provide a robust platform in...Read More

Today, Beehive Media launched the newly redesigned New Center for Arts & Culture website. The site is built on Expression Engine, a content management system (CMS), which has empowered the organization to keep the site current with the Center's many and varied happenings. The New Center can quickly and easily add photos, videos, podcasts, newsletters,...Read More

Today, Beehive launched a new website for Centerbrook Architects and Planners, a national architectural design firm serving mainly institutional clients. The site’s clean design and spectacular photographs quickly communicate the firm’s deep experience, exceptional industry expertise, and its eclectic approach to projects. Beehive validated Centerbrook’s own design mockups, advised on the information architecture and constructed...Read More

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers asked us to prepare a video based on PwC’s Arab Business Intelligence Report, later renamed to the Arab Human Capital Challenge (AHCC), reporting on trends in the Arab World.  The report was renamed to reflect the primary finding, which is that the one of the Arab...Read More

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library came to Beehive Media for a revamping of their website. The new site is rich in content, visually compelling, and uses leading edge technology. Users can search by multiple criteria, and zoom into minute detail of high-resolution maps (using Zoomify Beta technology). Educators can...Read More

Sorouh Real Estate, one of the largest real estate developers in the United Arab Emirates, asked Beehive Media for help showcasing its premiere projects in its Abu Dhabi Sales Centre. Beehive installed its innovative kSPACE: Geospatial application, which is a first-in-the-world mashup of Flash and Google Earth, combining the impact of Google Earth with all...Read More