Articles in Personal
by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Personal
We’re coming up on our second year of calling 47m our full time job so I thought I’d share some things we’ve learned along the way. I’m attempting to shorten my Top 10 lists…not by number but by content. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a Top 10 list now would it? So without further ado, the slimmer Top 10!
1. Don’t Go in Debt
Ten years ago you needed a detailed business plan and a hefty loan from a bank to start a business. But web based businesses have changed everything. You don’t need a office or a fancy new desk. You don’t need a company car. You really don’t need much of anything except a computer and some software. I’m happy to say that we slogged it out for two years working full time jobs and doing 47m on the side until we built up enough cash inflow to make it our day jobs. Not only does it make you more responsible, but in this economy debt is like poison. Get rid of it now!
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Personal
I went to Food City to buy some groceries today, tried to slip through the self-checkout because I was in a hurry and guess what they don’t accept there? Their own gift cards. Seriously? So I have to cancel my order and walk 5 steps to a register with a person behind it. And then guess what? I use the exact same credit card processing machine and the cashier never touches my card!
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Personal
Efficiency. The word that strikes fear in the heart of designers everywhere. Somehow along the way to becoming our artsy selves, we’ve managed to throw all structure out the window. “We’re above that sort of thing; we’re creatives!” we say.
It’s ok, we’ve all been there. I know it started with good intentions: we knew if we had a little more time or a change of scenery, it could make the difference between something good and something amazing. But then somehow it turned into an excuse to take longer to finish things. And an excuse to take longer breaks more often. And before you know it, we’re taking twice as long to finish projects, but they’re not anymore awesome than before. What happened!?
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Personal
Want even more 47m? Well now you can have us!….no wait that’s weird. What I mean is we’re officially on Twitter and Flickr now so you can follow us or check out our portfolio elsewhere.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Personal
Well, in case you hadn’t noticed there’s an election coming up pretty soon. A pretty big one, actually. So in the spirit of all that is “true” in these crazy times, we want to share a small project with everyone.
It’s called USATaxDollars.com. Just put in your annual salary and you see every last dollar that the government takes out of your paycheck; and what they spend it on. Guess what? I’m giving the government more money each month than my house payment! Now that’s depressing.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Personal
Yeah we know. It’s been way too quiet around here. Not many new portfolio entries; not many blog posts. We’re slackers, I tell you! Well, maybe not 
First, we have been doing a TON of work. Web app design, social network design, interface design. Except none of it’s live to the public yet. The backend guys are still doing their thing. And in the past two weeks we just pushed through about 3 or 4 major front-end design projects that should be live shortly. Plus, we’ve done several for other agencies that you can only guess that we did by their awesomeness cause they won’t let us put it in our portfolio. But such is the way of the wayward web designer.
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by Nate Croft in Personal
Continuing our “Why It’s Fun to Have A Camera In Your Phone” theme, we bring you this culinary geographical/zoological puzzler.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Personal
Most of us have gotten used to carrying around a phone that also has a camera in it. Makes for great quick shots when you wouldn’t normally have time to grab your regular camera. I happen to have an iPhone, and yes I know it’s camera isn’t that great, but hey it was better than the old Razr’s so there you go. Plus I can show people in style by flipping, zooming and pinching. Yeah that’s right .
So anyway, I’ve been accumulating some really random pictures I snapped on the fly and thought I’d share them. Enjoy!
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Personal
I will readily admit that I am a total nerd. I was totally psyched about the new Indiana Jones movie that came out a few weeks ago. I went out and bought the first three and watched them in like two days. Watched all the extra stuff on the DVD’s. I can’t even tell you how many childhood memories those movies brought back. It was great!
But when I finally went to see the new one, I found myself a bit disappointed. Some of the scenes were so ridiculous that I just couldn’t get past the impossibility of them. The atomic refrigerator? The monkey vine-swinging thing? Three ginormous waterfalls? I mean, seriously! Yeah I knew the first three had implausible moments, too but not like this! Or were they?
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Personal
Ever wanted your logo hand carved from a massive piece of wood by natives of Papua New Guinea? Ok, so maybe it wasn’t the first thing on your list, but dang it’s cool. My wife’s sister and her husband are missionaries in New Guinea and are back in the states to make the rounds to all their supporters and show them what they’ve been up to. Too many “and’s” in that last sentence? Probably. Regardless, we just got this in yesterday and had to share.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Apple,
Personal
So the other night the wife and I were at the Apple store looking for Time Capsules for 47m. Happened to see the new AppleTV setup while we were there, and the HD movies looked incredible. I mean, jaw droppingly good. Yeah, I know BlueRay is better, but seeing Transformers in “almost” HD compared to the standard def movies I was used to; I was hooked. No more trips to Blockbuster, I nudged the wife (Gently nudged, of course)!
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Personal
Hey everybody, sorry we’ve been kind of quiet around here lately! Since we launched the new site in January we’ve had a flood of job requests come in and thus our free time has diminished a bit.
In addition, Nate and I are both helping to start new churches. Nate is running sound over at Turkey Creek Church (no, we didn’t do the website…don’t know why) and I’m leading worship and handling web duties at EdgePoint Church.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Personal
I’ve been following the guys over at Less Everything for a while, and noticed some posts about…well us for one (ahem, sorry I couldn’t resist), but also about a new web app they put together called Less Memories. The octopus brain thing intrigued me.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Personal
I’m a frequent reader of Seth Godin’s blog, and his recent entry “Music Lessons” is mostly right on the money.
I think everyone is in agreement that the music industry has been ripping us off for years; their business model from 1950 is dead, and they’re floundering around trying to figure out what to do. Copy protection; while a decent first tackle at the problem; should have been dropped years ago. Suing your own customers. Stupid. Yeah, yeah we’ve heard all this before.
What makes Godin’s entry so interesting is that he reminds us that it can happen to any business.
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by Nate Croft in Personal
Years ago while I was in college, I worked for several different major retailers over a period of about two years. I did a stint at The Home Depot loading cement bags and heaving potting soil. I survived a Christmas season as your friendly neighborhood consumer electronics consultant at Best Buy. And believe it or not, I even worked a desperate couple of months at Bed Bath and Beyond.
It was great time in my life, but I wasn’t aware of it until much later. At the time, I was miserable.
The purely logical, problem solving part of my brain must have been put in charge for a while because I was looking at things from a very narrow perspective then. I needed money. To get money, I needed a job. So I got one. Now I had some money. There was a very “*happy word* and Jane” sort of simplicity at work here. For various reasons, (none of which included being fired, thank God) I switched from one job to the next, trying to find one that I could stick with. I really wanted to work, to do a good job and enjoy doing it. But that wasn’t happening.
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