Armadillo Studios Inc.

Team Armadillo vs. The Canadian Blog Awards

We hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving (or Columbus Day) long weekend. We know we sure did.

So to start this newly minted shortened week off, Team Armadillo is proud to announce that *three of our blog projects* are now nominated for “Canadian Blog Awards”:http://cdnba.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/blog-awards-round-1-voting-has-begun/.

Yes, *Glutastic.com*, *Mike’s Bloggity Blog*, and *The Review Crew* are all nominated for Canadian blog awards. For those unfamiliar the “Canadian Blog Awards”:http://cdnba.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/blog-awards-round-1-voting-has-begun/, they are a fan driven national award and are a bit of a big deal in the Canadian Blogging world.

As a company, we know that these great sites are driven by some fantastic content, but we also feel a little proud that our aesthetics could be that little something _extra_ that pushes them into the upper echelon of the Canadian Blogosphere.

So congratulations to all three of these great sites and make sure you give them a vote. The first round of voting ends on *October 17th, 2010*. Use the clicks below to jump straight to the polls.

* Glutastic.com – “Best Creative Activities Blog 2010 (Art, Crafts, Cooking, Photography, etc)”:http://polldaddy.com/poll/3900688/
* MikesBloggityBlog.com “Best Blog 2010”:http://polldaddy.com/poll/3900571/ & “Best Pop Culture Blog”:http://polldaddy.com/poll/3901042/
* TheReviewCrew.com “Best Blog 2010”:http://polldaddy.com/poll/3900571/ & “Best Science & Tech Blog”:http://polldaddy.com/poll/3901075/

So if you have a moment, please give these great members of the Armadillo Family your support.


The yycApps Makeover

Who doesn’t love a web site makeover? Really, who doesn’t.

So with that, we’re happy to announce the much needed makeover of our beloved pet project – “yycApps”:http://www.yycapps.com.

The *yycApps.com* project started a little over 6 months ago, and since that cold winter evening has grown into a powerful resource for Calgary iPhone/iPad app developers. In conjunction, with the “moreapps”:http://www.yycapps.com/moreapps.php project, yycapps.com draws in about 2,000 viewers a month and is slowly becoming a reliable source for people curious about the growing iPhone development community in Calgary.

As you can see from the old design, pictured above, the site needed a dramatic redesign. The grungy texture and dark colour palette was a great design at the time, but it didn’t encourage a sense of community or professionalism. So with this new design we hope to help grow the community and the site even more.

So please, have a look at the new yycapps. We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions to make the site that much better.


The Canadian Legacy Project Launches with Two Great Events

Earlier this month we teamed up with members of the Howard family and “The Event Group”:http://www.theeventgroup.ca to launch the new online home of the “Canadian Legacy Project”:http://www.canadianlegacy.org.

The Canadian Legacy Project is a new non-profit foundation dedicated to _improving the lives of disadvantaged youth, seniors and veterans and mobilize collective action in celebrating the legacy_.

The Canadian Legacy Project is in it’s first year of existence and is already working to help local Calgarians with the “Seniors Day Out this past September”:http://www.canadianlegacy.org/seniors-day-out and also “the 4th annual Veterans Food Drive”:http://www.canadianlegacy.org/events which will take place in November.

To help establish the foundation and build a strong following, we went about designing a unique identity for the web site. One that would invoke a sense of pride and honored tradition. As the main portal for information regarding the foundation, we wanted to create an engaging layout while also making it easy to navigate. We also utilized large colourful buttons to draw the users attention to some of the more important aspects of the site – such as the volunteer, donate and event pages.

We also established a soft and professional colour palette, with a combination of light greys and steel blue. We also created a unique maple leaf medallion logo for the Project as a way to reinforce the project’s commitment to Canadian Veterans, Seniors and our cherished past of servitude.

We are extremely excited to be working with the Canadian Legacy and to help them achieve their online goals. We look forward to seeing the foundation grow over the next months and to see the uplifting change that they plan to bring to our community.

_Sidenote: In November The Canadian Legacy Project will be working with Crown Surplus on the fourth annual Veterans Food Drive. Please check into the site over the next couple of weeks as the foundation begins providing more detailed information regarding the drive_.


Armadillo Studios and Drupal Camp

We are excited! … *Correction*.

We are incredibly stoked to be a bronze level sponsor of “Drupal Camp Alberta this September 11th and 12th at the University of Calgary”:http://www.drupalcampalberta.org/.

This is the first time in it’s three year history that Drupal Camp Alberta will be held in our hometown. So to recognize such a great step forward for the Drupal community, we thought we’d provide “a bit of sponsorship”:http://www.drupalcampalberta.org/sponsors and a hand for this merry band of Lethbridge designers.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Drupal Camp concept, it’s essentially a two-day _tour de farce_ for everything Drupal.

The sessions are designed to bring the growing Drupal Camp community together to share ideas, techniques, tools and strategies that make this CMS one of the most powerful tools in the Web industry. Through Drupal Camp Alberta, we are hoping to see a stronger more tight-nit Drupal development community emerge in this fine city. The team at “RedWall”:http://www.redwall.ca/ and “Lethbridge Web Design”:http://lethbridgewebdesign.ca/ have already done an exceptional job of fostering the community down south and we look forward to seeing them in our hometown.

If you’re planning to attend Drupal Camp Alberta, keep an eye out for Team Armadillo’s own _Drupal Ninja_ – Ryan Boley. He’ll be in attendance this weekend and would love to spend some time talking everything Drupal.


Are You There Social Media? It’s Me Conflict!

Last year around this time, I was luckily enough to be asked by “Alex Lemanski”:http://www.bitfyre.net/, of bitfyre fame, to partake in a panel proposal for SXSW 2010 on the meat and bones of freelancing called “Leave Your Job, Start An Agency”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/leave-your-job-start-an-agency. A year later and after a very well received SXSW panel, I am fortunate enough once again to be asked to partake in another panel proposal for SXSW 2010 called “Are You There Social Media? It’s Me Conflict!”:http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7784

*Are You There Social Media? It’s Me Conflict* is going to be a no holds barred discussion on Social Media and it’s current role in Global Conflict. Everyone knows that social media is the _golden child_ of marketing and it’s impact on local and international business have been beaten to death, but what, if anything, is Social Media doing in the realm of International Conflict? What are the positive changes that have been implemented? Or are we looking at it’s role with rose-coloured industry glasses and maybe everything isn’t turning up as _sunshine and lollipops_ as it seems.

It’s going to be an incredibly interesting panel conversation and it’ll bring together a pretty interesting team. Including, (obviously myself):

* “Caitlin Currie”:http://www.nonresidentalien.ca – A rogue academic, a Masters Candidate at the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR), George Mason University and a contributing member of Techchange.org.
* “Lyndsie Bourgon”:http://www.lyndsiebourgon.com/tagged/portfolio – A freelance journalist who has been published in King’s Journalism Review, The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star and Canadian Business.
* “Nick Martin”:http://www.techchange.org/index.php?/About-Us/meet-the-team.html – Who is the co-founder and president of TechChange and is a visiting professor at the United Nations University for Peace (UPEACE).

It’s going to be quite the heated and diverse conversation, *but this is where we need your help!* if you’ve got a second and do plan on attending “SXSW’11 in Austin, please log on to the panel picker”:http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7784 and give our panel a big thumbs-up. *Voting closes on August 27th*, so be quick.