Author Archives: Josh Kinal
About Josh Kinal
Josh makes things on the web easy to use and understand. Sounds simple, but it’s not. His understanding of developing engaging content comes from many years of writing for print and radio. You might have heard him on Boxcutters, his popular weekly podcast about TV or years of appearing on Triple J, Radio National and 3RRR. He also holds a science degree and in 2012 was one of Australia’s few panelists at SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas
Business: Why We Sold Out
February 8, 2012
At the start of this year, Soupgiant started discussions with Floate Design Partners about a plan they had to acquire us. We’ve been doing this on our own since 2009. Running our own business wasn’t as much our dream as creating great website the way we thought they should be built. Striving for high levels […]
Content Strategy: Clout by Colleen Jones: book review
September 12, 2011
Colleen Jones lays the premise of influence firmly on the table and discusses ways to begin thinking about content strategy as a means of influencing audiences on the web. The title of the book is explicit and confronting but how does the content itself stack up?
Tags: books, communication, content, Content Strategy, professional development, review
Quick Notes: How Google Damages Its Own Brand
August 10, 2011
Google Reader allows me to send to Twitter but not Google+. What is this doing to Google’s own branding?
Tags: brand, google, google plus, user experience
Content Strategy: Check Your Content
July 13, 2011
Testing content before publishing is important and there are many quick and cheap ways to achieve a good result that will save your brand. It’s all about having a content strategy in place and keeping to that strategy.
Tags: brand, content, drafting, marketing, reputation, strategy, testing, user experience, vodafone
Quick Notes: Website Policies and SEO
July 7, 2011
Looking through the RACV website policies I noticed this item: 7. linking to this web site 7.1 If you wish to establish a link to this web site you must, in the first instance, use the Contact Us link at the top of the page and provide the following information: a) the URL of the […]
Content Strategy: Vodafone, Confusion, and Content Strategy
July 5, 2011
Recently, Vodafone Australia sent its customers an email that caused a great deal of confusion. We have a look at what it could have done differently and how a simple rewrite and a bit of content strategy could have saved the brand a lot of difficulty.
Tags: brand, content, drafting, editing, email, strategy, telecommunications, vodafone
Design: Usability, Trust and the iPad
June 9, 2011
Apple are known for their beautiful design and their “it just works” mentality. It’s one of the things I love about my own Apple products. My parents, on the other hand, are known for not being me.
The only computers my parents have ever used are Windows machines and English is their third language.
I wanted to see how easy it would be for them to set up an iPad 2 for themselves.
Tags: Accessibility, Apple, expectations, iPad, usability
Design: Details Prevent User Paralysis
January 4, 2011
User paralysis is a horrible side effect of lack of attention to detail. Recently I saw a TED Talk by Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman for the Ogilvy Group in the UK. In it he describes how it’s the small things that make all the difference.
I saw, first-hand, how simple it is to both bring on and avoid user paralysis.
Tags: details, user experience, user interaction, UX
Quick Notes: Branding is hard
December 5, 2010
Making a great brand starts with having a great name and that means being able to buy a great or, at least, good domain name as Jason Calacanis explains.
Quick Notes: How @font-face loads in different browsers
December 3, 2010
Why do you sometimes see the fonts change on a website after it loads? This is just one of the many ways browsers behave differently, as explained in this quote from Richard Rutter.
Tags: @font-face, chrome, CSS, fonts, internet explorer, JavaScript, safari