March 2007
It seems hard to believe, but after 12 years as an independent business AMAZING! has a new family. What does this mean for our clients? It means all the same Web goodness AMAZING!'s been providing for years, and a larger staff to deliver it. All new work will be going through OpenSourcery, but phone numbers, email addresses and even the physical address won't change. We're all excited to be part of the OpenSourcery team and we're looking forward to great things in the near future!
Read the full press release here
January 2007
NEW CLIENT: KPRG - NPR GUAM
We'd like to welcome a new client to the family - KPRG FM, the NPR station in Guam. To better serve the members of their community and to grow the reach of their fundraising efforts KPRG is bringing their on-air signal online. AMAZING is providing the hardware, software and services to digitize the radio signal and stream it to users anywhere and everywhere on the Internet. We are proud to continue our tradition of contributing to the mission of Public Broadcasting!
KPRG FM
NEW SITE - Online Community wiki site for Partners in Nursing
Partners Investing in Nursing's Future (PIN) is a partnership of the Northwest Health Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and ten other foundations around the country. The problem: how do you get all these people around the country communicating, working together and sharing knowledge? The solution: a wiki. (What's a "wiki"? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) Unfortunately the PIN Online Community is private, we can't let you explore it unguided. Why is it so great? Very simple reasons - Anyone who's familiar with MS Word already knows how to create and edit pages. It's also very simple to upload and attach files and images. In short - it's a tech-based tool that regular humans can use. We build this wiki from an Open Source wiki engine called DekiWiki. It's really great - call or email and we'll arrange a demo.
http://www.partnersinnursing.org/
DekiWiki
October 2006
NOW IN OUR 12TH YEAR
That's right - count up the number of Web development companies in Portland who've been around as long as we have. It won't take long. Our longevity is a testimonial to our Web skills, value to our clients and sticktoitness. It's been a long time since 1995 when we were laughed at when we told people that their parents would have email addresses and we'd see URL's in TV commercials.
NEW SITE - Partners in Nursing
We're proud to announce the launch of the Phase I Partners in Nursing site for the Northwest Health Foundation. Partners Investing in Nursing's Future (PIN) is a partnership of the Northwest Health Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support the capacity, involvement and leadership of local foundations to advance the nursing profession in their own communities. The Phase I site is the project's face to the world, informing the public and potential grantees. In addition to our usual attractive and functional design, we converted a video DVD to a multimedia slideshow. Phase II will include a suite of online collaboration tools for the PIN program grantees.
Partners Investing in Nursing's Future
http://www.partnersinnursing.org/
The OCNE slideshow
http://www.partnersinnursing.org/slide_show_01.html
DODGEBALL!
Some of you know Levi Ness, he's been doing a great job pushing the pixels for our client sites for over a year now. Levi and the Portland United Dodgeball team recently competed in the Dodgeball World Championships. That's right - Dodgeball! They didn't bring home the trophy, but our lads and lassies made it to the fourth round and even knocked off last year's champions!
Dodgeball Photos
May 2006
NORTHWEST EDUCATION CLUSTER TECH FAIR
If you'd like to come say "HI" and see what other NorthWest education companies are up to, we'll be on the PSU campus for the Ed Cluster tech fair on Tuesday May 16 from 11 until 4:30. If you represent a company or organization that works with education in some way, you should definitely join the cluster. For more information on tech fair and the cluster:
http://www.nwedcluster.com/
AMAZING'S OPB PROJECTS ARE TOPS AT ANNENBERG
AMAZING! has completed four projects with OPB and the Annenberg Foundation. Of these projects American Passages is the second most popular Web series at Annenberg with 114,000 page views in February 2006. Rediscovering Biology is their most popular online course with 104,000 page views in February and Bridging World History the third most visited with 46,000 page views over that same time period. In the words of the Annenberg program officer for these projects, "You can say with confidence that OPB's productions are among the best used and most popular among those distributed by Annenberg Media." Visit the Annenberg site and see for yourself, or visit our portfolio page to read about what makes these sites so useful.
http://www.learner.org
http://www.amz.com/missions.html
NEW CLIENT - THE NORTHWEST HEALTH FOUNDATION
The Northwest Health Foundation (http://www.nwhf.org/) has chosen AMAZING! to build the Web site and tools for the new Partners Investing in Nursing's Future program. Partners Investing in Nursing's Future (PIN) is a collaborative initiative between Northwest Health Foundation and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (http://www.rwjf.org/) that will address nursing issues at the local level through funding partnerships with community and regional foundations. In June we'll be launching the main informational site about PIN, and in September we'll be introducing a suite of extranet tools for groups working with PIN grants. We're proud to have the opportunity to make a positive impact on the healthcare of America.
NEW CLIENT - INCIGHT
Incight has a simple mission Ð to educate and employ people with disabilities. Incight's next big goal is to create an internship center to match students with internships with local Oregon businesses. AMAZING! has been chosen to create the center web site and tools. Currently 1 in 5 disabled Americans are unemployed. The internship center will give students with disabilities the experience and confidence to take their proper place in the workforce. We are very excited to have the opportunity to help disabled students reach their full potential.
http://www.incight.org
NEW SITE - WEST SIDE ELECTRIC
Who do you call when your lights go out? Or your phone system dies? Or you want your plasma screen TV to drop out of a hidden compartment in your ceiling? http://www.westsideelectric.com, that's who! West Side Electric has been serving Portland since 1961 and their original web site was long overdue for an overhaul. In addition to being an effective marketing tool the new WSE site will also soon host their employee schedule online and allow staff to submit timecards without having to make a special trip to the office. We're very happy to be contributing to the success of a local family owned business.
http://www.westsideelectric.com
December 2005
AMAZING! - NOW IN OUR 11th YEAR
Jeff, Bernhard and Steve got together for the first time in 1994. Want to see the very first Web site we built? It's still online here - http://www.amz.com/maze. (Optimized for Netscape 1.1n!) In 1995 we incorporated AMAZING! and started doing business. You young whipper-snappers probably don't remember this, but back then most people hadn't heard of the Internet, or thought it would go the way of CB Radio. I was laughed at when I said everyone would have an email address and that we'd see URL's in TV advertisements. What a crazy dreamer!
SITE REDESIGN - THE ASSESSMENT TRAINING INSTITUTE
ATI makes products to train teachers how to use assessments to help their students learn better. Back in 2001 we replaced ATI's home-built site and added a shopping cart for their products. In 2005 is was time to bring the site up to date to modern standards. In addition to the new look we added a new database interface to their online product catalog and easier in-house editing for ATI staff with Macromedia Contribute. Over the next few weeks we'll also be adding online registration for all their events and upgraded order processing. We're proud to be involved in helping students learn. Take a look:
http://www.assessmentinst.com
PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY - SCHOOL OF EDUCATION - XCLRAS VERSION 4
This fall and winter we completed the fourth version of the Extended CLRAS online assessment system. In short, all the special needs children are required to be assessed. They aren't capable of filling in all those little bubbles with a #2 pencil like you and I did. Instead their teachers used to assess them using a stack of forms. A few years ago we moved the system online. Now teachers, parents and school administrators get fast and easy access to their student's performance, including assessments from previous years through the XCLRAS Web site. With version 4 we made major improvements in the user interface and added other important features, like an automatic logout for security. AMAZING! is proud to be involved in improving the lives of the handicapped and their families.
Only teachers and school administrators are allowed access to the XCLRAS system. You can see the entry page below. Upon request we'd be happy to arrange a tour of the demo version of the XCLRAS site.
https://www.extendedclras.pdx.edu/xclras4/login/
This fall we added a new client to our roster. Please welcome CT Consulting to the family. CT Consulting provides in-person and online training both live and self-paced. Our work for them was the very first fully-interactive Flash based training including audio, video and online testing. Visit their E-Learning Center to learn more:
http://www.myplacetolearn.com/
March 2005
BRIDGING WORLD HISTORY WEB SITE AND VIDEO SERIES GOES LIVE
After well over a year of production the Bridging World History multimedia educational series has gone live to teachers and students. The problem it’s trying to solve? Most secondary school teachers teaching World History have no training in history. History is not just names, dates and places. A deeper understanding of history requires an understanding of the themes that connect the events and human creations - even ones that seem far apart in time and distance.
Building an interactive to show this working was quite a challenge and allowed us to break new ground. To take a look, and maybe learn a few things, jump to this page and “Launch the Traveler Interactive”:
The Traveler is built in Flash and loads all its information from a MySQL database over the Web. The visitor can use the interactive to collect useful materials as they browse, and even print them out to a PDF for later.
In addition to the Web design and Interactives AMAZING! also helped Oregon Public Broadcasting with the show open video production, map images for the video series and the keys and credits. Thanks to our partners Hot Pepper Studios for their creative skills.
We are proud to have the opportunity to help OPB and the Annenberg Foundation deliver quality educational materials.
NEW CLIENT: FINDTUITION.COM
Do you or someone you know have teenagers thinking about going to college? If you do, you should send them to http://www.findtuition.com. FindTuition is a subscription based scholarship search service that allows users to search and manage scholarship opportunities. Users can search for national awards, school sponsored awards, athletic awards and all state and federal sponsored financial aid programs. There’s free money out there waiting for your kids to find it!
Recently AMAZING!’s been helping the local FindTuition team with prototyping and mockup production for new services.
CAYUSE SOFTWARE:
The AMAZING! team has been building complex cross-browser compatible DHTML and CSS pages for Cayuse Software. If I told you any more, they’d probably have to shoot me.
AMAZING! TOPS THE CHARTS:
The Annenberg Foundation reports that our American Passages Web site is one of the most popular properties in the extensive Learner.org system. Visit it here:
http://www.learner.org/amerpass/
News Archive
Our News Archive contains all past news clips and event information.
