Then, I found Balsamiq Markups. Balsamiq Markups is like my whiteboard on steroids — yet, still much, much better than that.  Balsamiq is an Adobe AIR application that allows you to quickly prototype a site using common elements found on a web page like buttons, tabs, search, etc.  You can quickly and easily re-size elements, group them together, or lock them on the page.  (My whiteboard never did that.)

Balsamiq Mockups deftly combines a rough, hand-drawn sketch look with a smooth, Visio-like ability to arrange elements on a page.  For designers, this will save them from getting into Photoshop right away.  These mock-ups allow you to get a feel for space and alignment without needing to commit to color, design, or typography.  For everyone else, Balsamiq provides one of the easiest ways for you to get into the web design game too.  Developers can test out what they’re trying to build, product managers can test out new ideas — heck, even corporate executives can figure this thing out.

Because Balsamiq’s so easy to use, it’s a great tool for soliciting group UI discussion.  You can quickly iterate on an idea using multiple versions of a mock or by simply changing your design on the fly.  On top of all that, it’s actually fun to use.  When was the last time you picked up a new software product and said that?

To see for yourself, try out Balsamiq’s online demo.  You’ll quickly get sick of being told you’re using a demo, but you’ll also quickly find yourself feeling like you have the design skills of Steve Jobs.  For $79, you can have that feeling all you want with their full version.

As a blogger, I was granted a free license in exchange for an honest review (it meets my advertising tolerance level), so in that vein, here are a few things I think could be better:

1. The toolbar could use some improvement.  It takes up a substantial portion of the screen yet it seems like I’m always trying to find an element.  Sections labelled “Big” aren’t that helpful.  The issue’s alleviated by placing elements in multiple sections, but better labeling and smaller icons would certainly help.  Maybe a scrolling list with a single preview of the image?  I have ideas about this
2. The fade away toolbar that rests on the editing screen is also a bit tricky.  I often didn’t know what was hidden behind this section.  When it appears, it always seems to be in the way.  When I need something, I can’t always figure out where it is.  For example, clicking on the down arrow to bring up all icon options was not entirely intuitive.  I think there’s room for this to be in the top bar to save space on the editing screen and make it more visible.
3. Last, I’d say ditch the notebook look.  You don’t need to reinforce the fact that Balsamiq mirrors a sketch, and the notebook-on-a-web-page look feels very first generation blog to me.  Balsamiq couldn’t be further from first generation web and the rest of the editor should reflect that!

Thanks Balsamiq!

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Web 2.0 Chicken Pox

In a previous post, I talked about how social networking buttons were popping up all over the place, but few people knew what they were. Well, I’ll consider this a bit a journalistic exploration. You can also find these links in the Enter Venture feed.

• StumbleUpon - I completely recommend StumbleUpon to anyone that hasn’t tried it. It recommends really interesting websites. For example, in two clicks from my StumbleUpon toolbar just now, I was taken to a site describing the anatomy of a black hole and a site listing the top censored stories of 2007.
• Facebook – Most of my incoming links have come from facebook. Hopefully someone will find this useful
• Digg This – I just can’t get over how cool ‘Digg This’ looks on the page. Ya dig?
• Email This – Because it doesn’t require you to have 30 different log ins with social networking sites

I came so close to calling this post “version 2.0,” but I couldn’t bear it. It’s probably best to avoid this term like the plague given the strong reactions it can induce.

Email Subscriptions

You can now have Enter Venture emailed to you each morning. This might be best for all of you struggling with RSS overload now that you’re using your feed reader. It’s so much easier to delete an email.

Moderated Sidebar: Humor, New People, Popular Posts

I updated the sidebar to better reflect who’s posting on here and the fact that I still haven’t defined early entrepreneurship. Hint: that’s intentional.

I finally showed Vik a little love by putting him in the sidebar. All kidding aside, it’s great having his posts on Enter Venture. He brings a different perspective with the potential to create new ideas and ensures this site remains interdisciplinary.

I installed WordPress Stats for my own administration, and one of the cool things I can do to leverage that information is report popular posts for Enter Venture. Unfortunately, this doesn’t account for activity prior to the Stats installation that was tracked with Google Analytics, but if you’re curious, here are the top three to date:

1. Columbia Venture Community
2. Dealing with Constraints
3. Back up, what the feed are you talking about?

The Trivial

I made a bunch more seemingly trivial upgrades, but that doesn’t always mean they’re trivial tasks. The modified archive pages that now mirror the main page gave me a few scrapes. There were a few bullet rendering updates, alt tag improvements, and alignment tweaks that were more modest.

I think the rule with all of this is that the less you notice, the better. Let’s hope so — except for those Web 2.0 doohickies. Notice those. Enjoy the new stuff.

So, what’s new? Well, everything about Enter Venture has changed. Has it? It looks mostly the same as before. Some of you may have noticed my apology to IE users that used to be in the sidebar. I originally built the Enter Venture theme using a blank WordPress framework I found online.

This was the ideal way to get started with Enter Venture because I simply had to add the elements and styles that I wanted. There was no baggage to deal with. A true blank slate.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. It’s not possible to work with someone else’s code without dealing with their baggage. There was a severe crack in my blank slate, and the more I tinkered with this framework, the worse the cracks became. I had trouble getting the design to work remotely similar in IE versus FireFox. I had markup validation problems galore. Everything I did seemed like a hack.

This morning, I ditched the blank slate and decided to re-build Enter Venture using the Default Theme that comes with WordPress. Since I already knew what I wanted Enter Venture to look like, it was drastically simpler for me to work with an existing theme this time around. Also, since I’d already built the Enter Venture theme once, I could remove the Default elements and rebuild with the design and code from the previous Enter Venture template. While flawed, that original blank slate design made this exercise much, much simpler.

Now, the sidebar actually shows up in IE! The header’s bottom border shows up in IE!

Even better, working from this more robust framework gave me several improvements for free. Enter Venture now supports comments. Also, since I’m using the framework for the original Default template, I was able to build my Links list simply from the WordPress admin menu. I also moved the Twitter script to its proper location so it will not prevent the page from loading if (when) Twitter is having response issues.

There will be more improvements to come, but I’d like to focus on content for awhile. For now, “Look ma, no hacks!”

I think there’s a waterfall effect when it comes to creating a new website. First, you have an idea for a website that’s going to change the world (or just make you a lot of money). Once you have an idea, you have to come up with a name. Once you have a name, you have to design your logo. Once you have a logo, you have to design your site.

Once you have users, you realize that the idea, name, logo, and site design all need to be fixed, but that’s another post altogether. (There are a lot more steps involved, but this is a post about the logo and design so just go with it).

For this post, I’ll take you through my waterfall.

The Name

Enter Venture. I like the way the two words rhyme. Bingo.

Honestly, deciding to choose the name Enter Venture was an easy, gut reaction; however, it took it took me 2 months working with 3 different people, countless checks on register.com, and plenty of time with thesaurus.com to come up with Enter Venture / enterventure.com.

There were a few exercises I went through to come up with Enter Venture. My favorite exercise is the stream of consciousness word dump onto a whiteboard. Next, I took a step back to think of synonyms for the words that best encapsulated my idea. Working with other people helped further diversify my options. Finally, I confined myself to certain guidelines: no three word names, must have a “.com” address, etc.

There are probably a million ways to come up with a website or company name, but I think the three guiding principles of 1) Brainstorm 2) Build Constraints and 3) Get Feedback, in whatever order, will give you your best chance for naming success.

The Logo

It took surprisingly little time to conceive the idea for the Enter Venture logo. I knew we wanted a something simple (a theme you’ll hear repeated on this blog). I would much rather start with something simple and build on it. Also, who needs a great logo? I’d much rather have a great product than an intricate logo. See Facebook, Digg, etc.

One simple look at the “Enter” key on my keyboard gave me the idea to separate the two words Enter and Venture by putting Enter in button. I was open to any button but thought something that evoked the idea of an “Enter” key would be clever.

With an affordable designer I was able to test out this one idea and three other design concepts. The button idea looked great and with a few tweaks to color and font, Enter Venture’s logo was complete.

The Design

Another thing that we communicated to our designer was that we would have a white background site. I love white background sites. I don’t see any other real option for text rich sites. White backgrounds have worked for text since the days of papyrus so it’ll be tough to convince me to do otherwise.

The design, like the logo, is minimalist. It’s so basic that I decided to immediately remove the Google Ads I originally placed in the sidebar. With a basic, but unique design I will be able to focus on creating content.

(One final note about the design: it’s not done. For all of you IE browser users out there, bear with me).

I’ve now nearly wrapped up the ‘why i’m here’ and ‘what i’m about’ pieces. Stay tuned next time for my Modus Operandi, part 1. We’re almost there.