Welcome the Vander Wilt!
In which our team adds another awesome person, thanks to the Tweeterwebs
Nate Vander Wilt is the diversely talented web and desktop developer who makes the sixth employee added to &yet over the last year. We got to know Nate primarily on Twitter, believe it or not.
Nate’s a midwest transplant currently living on a semi-dusty gravel road in the bustling city of Outlook, WA.
Nate brings to the team his diverse talents in “cloud cartography” (geography and web mapping), multitouch interface, Mac, iPhone, and HTML5 web application development.
Before joining &yet, Nate ran Mac and iPhone software company Calf Trail and worked as a contractor, developing custom web mapping solutions for clients like the National Weather Service.
Here’s Nate’s thoughts, from his cleverly titled post, HTML 5.0 Transitional:
Today I officially accepted a full-time job as “Web Application Developer and
GIS ExpertJourneyman” — employee number seven — at &yet.
Since meeting &yet (when it was just Adam Brault) a little over a year ago, it’s moved in my regard from “cool local website company” to “top-notch team” to “dream employer”.
To be honest, though, the job offer was mostly unexpected and I’m still adjusting to the task of becoming “dream employee” instead of an independent contractor. Writing shareware for Calf Trail was a chance to explore all my ideals. Especially the one about money not being important.
Working with &yet is about combining diverse talents and perspectives into one team that shares responsibility for breadwinning — and fantasticmaking, of course.
I’m deeply grateful that I’ve been led to and then given this opportunity. While desktop software still interests me as a hobby, times were shifting and I’d already chosen the open web over giving 30% ownership of my livelihood to a corporation who squish liberty like bug. Joining &yet mostly means a much greater chance of success in this next stage of life.
We’re still working out the details, but the basic gist is that I will be moving all my paid geo, web and technical writing services to &yet. Calf Trail will remain, for the time being anyway, but mostly as a home for some desktop and photo management experiments. (More about that later, and I’ll be posting the official “Calf Trail” plan on the company blog when Calf Trail has an official plan.)
So, yeah…uh…that’s today’s nerdishness news. DRAMATIC CLOSE.
P.S. Nate isn’t the only person that &yet hired because of Twitter…
Henrik has a really nice recounting of his hiring process up on his blog. (We added Henrik Joreteg to the team in February after recruiting him out of Southern California.)
It’s especially hilarious that he nearly unfollowed Adam for being too random.
He wouldn’t have been the first.
filed under
awesome,
henrik,
nate,
new hires,
and
twitter
posted June 28, 2010 by Adam Brault
New Digs
In which we move into a new house and have a big party
We’ve moved! Our old location was great, but since our staff size is multiplying like a family of rabbits, we had completely out grown it in less than a year. So we decided to trade in our crowed workspace for a custom designed upgrade down the street.
Our new space is at 140 Gage Boulevard in Richland. We’ve each got our own offices, conference room, kitchenette and a swanky brainstorming space. With a creative color scheme, custom art and leather sofas, it’s a downright gorgeous workspace.
On April 8th we had an Open House party with our friends and neighbors, nGenuity and elevate. We had great food, live music and a couple hundred awesome people stop by to show their support.
I think all of our team members feel lucky that we get to call this place home. We hope you are as excited as we are to see what we can accomplish in our awesome new space!
Photo by Jenifer Zohn Photography.
filed under
awesome,
and
new office
posted June 28, 2010 by Amy Lynn Taylor
How to create a Google Buzz desktop app
Use Fluid for Mac to get the iPhone/Android web app UI on your desktop.
If you’ve used Buzz in its two current versions, inside Gmail and on the iPhone, you’ve probably noticed (like me) that the iPhone web app version is much better. What’s more, Google went off and forgot about their actual paying customers — the ones on Google Apps-with-a-capital-A.
Here’s a quick little howto to take advantage of the much less clunky mobile UI for Buzz — assuming you’re on a Mac.
1. Download Fluid and run it.
2. Name it “Buzz” and set the address to “m.google.com/app/buzz”.
3. For the icon, select “Other…” and download this simple icon PNG I made as a replacement, if you want something a little less hideous than the default icon.
3. Click “Create” and then “Launch” when it’s done making your app. Don’t panic when it comes up with a normal website — we’re not done yet.
4. Select the “Buzz” menu item, then choose “User Agent” -> “Other…”
5. Enter in the Mobile Chrome / Android User Agent string:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17
6. Close and restart. Without restarting, while it’s still open go to “File” -> “Close Window” … then “File” -> “New Window”. Everything should suddenly come up roses.
7. You’re done. No, you’re not. To make it extra special, select “Buzz” -> “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” Now you’re done! It should run in the menu bar and be easy to open and close just by selecting it from there.
8. Now you’re reading the epilogue.
Note: If you have any trouble with the app opening up external windows, you can change what URLs the app can visit within the SSB, but the easiest “blanket” fix is to just go to “Buzz” -> “Preferences” -> “Advanced” -> “Enable browsing to any URL”.
filed under
buzz,
fluid,
and
iphone
posted February 10, 2010 by Adam Brault
& here we go…
Being finally, finally, finally, done with the new site
As a web design and development company, it’s incredibly hard to build things for yourself.
This site has been in process since early August, 2009, when we as a team sat down and discussed our vision for where we wanted to go.
We put together a general outline and a plan for how we wanted to approach things. Then Amy rolled up her sleeves and took a crack at a conceptual design based on an idea from one of her Red Room posters.
The plan has changed numerous times since then, as has the content and design. We’ve discussed and debated, wrestled and wrangled, but we’re ultimately grateful to have had the time to pick things apart and really think long and deep about what we wanted to present as a team.
In the end, we’re excited that what we do is finally presented in a way that reflects the unique team that has come together at &yet. It feels that this site was another missing piece of the puzzle we’ve been assembling for the last two years.
Thank you very much to the following folks who helped us out on the project:
So here we go.
filed under
planning,
and
web design
posted December 15, 2009 by Adam Brault
Thank you!
In which we describe our gratefulness
We’re humbled by the support of so many who have helped us grow from one to four (plus extended team) in just a year and a half.
We have some exciting things on their way soon, including an all-new realtime web product. We’re thrilled to be able to launch the new site so we can get back to the business of business!
It’s a privilege to be able to serve the great customers we’ve been able to work with so far and it’s a joy to be a part of the great Tri-Cities area tech community.
So—thank you!
With love,
the &yet Team (Nathan / Angela / Amy / Adam)
filed under
and
thanks
posted December 15, 2009 by Adam Brault
