I studied neuroscience in school because I was curious about how people work, and I still am. I learned about a lot of really amazing things our brains can do. For example, we are super good at understanding language. In fcat, I can wtrie a sentnece wtih all the lrettes in wdros scebramld up, and you wluod siltl be albe to urtnnesadd it pltefecry. You can understand someone who has a strong accent, slurs their speech, and uses improper grammar nearly as well as anyone else. Right?

We are also good at analyzing and classifying visual objects in 3D space. If someone throws a baseball, you can predict where it will land within about 5 feet just by eyeballing it. You can see a pattern in the stars and relate it to something you read about in a book 3 years ago. If you’ve ever taken a physics class, you would know that the calculations and measurements that are happening instantly and subconsciously in our brains here are pretty incredible.

If you think about the logistics of how our brains actually work, it’s mind blowing. Although some of the best programmers and scientists in the world still have not been able to crack these problems (speech and visual object recognition particularly), our brains compute them instantly, perfectly accurately, and subconsciously. That’s something to marvel at.

Our Lazy Brains

At the same time, our brains are mind-numbingly terrible at some things. Take, for example, remembering lots of things – we are so bad at this. You can be told someone’s name and forget it a minute later. And if I asked you to remember two phone numbers without writing it down? Forget it. Also think about math – although we’ve figured a lot out, we’re pretty bad at the calculations. We’re very slow and usually require a calculator to figure it out at a reasonable speed. In fact, we’re pretty bad all around at repetitive tasks. We do them slowly, and get bored with them quickly.

And this is for a good reason – the gorgeous and super talented brains we have shouldn’t be wasting time with trivial, boring, and repetitive things. We are born with the most complex and advanced logic in the world built in to us. Billions of dollars are poured into scientific research to try to figure out how our brains do it, and billions more go to computer scientists trying to replicate the things our brains can do. But guess what? We’re not even close – on either front.

Extend your brain

The power of programming is that we can use it to extend our brains’ abilities. When it comes down to it, remembering lots of things and doing repetitive tasks quickly is extremely important for many things in life, and it turns out computers are extremely good at these two types of tasks in particular. If you have a fluency in getting a computer to do what you want, you have transformed yourself into a superhuman – you can now do anything your brain normally can, plus you can remember vast amounts of information and you can do repetitive tasks extremely quickly.

In addition, offloading these kinds of tasks to a computer frees your super amazing brain to do more of… well, what it’s good at. You will inevitably run into problems that require remembering lots of info and/or boring & repetitive tasks, and if you can’t get a computer to do them for you, you will have to do them manually – this is a waste of time. We were not meant to remember tons of things, or do boring repetitive stuff – we were meant to learn, grow, and innovate. Don’t let yourself get bogged down by these wastes of time – the ability to program allows you to maximize your brain’s potential.

Increase your value

Many people see programming as a very domain-specific task. People who can program work in technology, right? Absolutely not. You can be just as valuable, sometimes even more valuable, in other fields when you can program. You add a lot to your base efficiency at work by being able to control a computer and offload certain tasks to it. But it’s not only you who will benefit. With your skills, you can create a more efficient work environment for everyone you work with. I bet you work with a bunch of people that waste tons of time on things computers could do better (almost everyone does) – stop that from happening. Build tools to make things you do often easier. Then build tools on top of those, and don’t stop there. If you keep doubling your efficiency, you will find that the way everything works tends to change very fundamentally.

So how to get started? Education is typically absurdly expensive and time consuming. Years ago, one would have said that the way to learn about computers is to major in computer science in college – a commitment of huge amounts of time and money. But today there are an overwhelming amount of resources available for free online (and offline) that can help you start to hone your superpowers. A couple that come to mind…

• Udacity
• Coursera
• Kahn Academy
• Skillshare
• Code Academy
• RubyMonk

…and there are certainly many more, but these alone should get you more learning than you can handle in a year of college, easily. So get out there and start upgrading yourself. Once you start, you’ll never want to go back.

Example

Remember that mixed up sentence from the first paragraph? I didn’t do the mixing manually – I wrote a short program to do it for me – and now anyone can use the program to sensically scramble any number of words. ‘Open sourcing’ programs (releasing all the code to anyone for free) is a great way to spread knowledge and build on what other people have done, and the open source community is vibrant and thriving among programmers. I open sourced the sentence scrambler program, and you should check it out! It’s hosted on github (the social network for programmers) and written in ruby.

Sensical Sentence Scrambler – Source Code

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I was doing just that, more specifically, at the Zya Music Party with Nick Cannon spinning behind me. There I was catching up with some friends from PepsiCo when I realized I was down to the wire (8% battery) and it was only 9:30PM. As a compulsive mobile and social media user, this was the equivalent to seeing “last exit for 100 miles” when you have less than a 1/4 tank of gas, know what im sayin?

So, with the whole night ahead of me I knew I needed a charge. As you can imagine, the ladies bathroom counter was a congregation of makeup retouches, and …OUTLETS! Four outlets with a line longer than the one to use the restroom.

As a SXSW n00b, my impression of festival attendees is generally friendly and approachable. It certainly helps that everyone is wearing their identity around their neck most the time. Sidenote: when I bumped into Eric Friedman he brought up a great point about badges; it makes the most sense to wear a badge on your right shoulder so it’s in line with the sight path you follow when going in for a handshake. It’s so much more difficult to read a badge hanging from a lanyard with so many variables in height. Let’s be honest, it’s just plain awkward to watch someone attempt to read your badge without slowing down the pace of their stride, it becomes this neck-cringing side-eye kinda look, it’s just plain scary.

My point is, I met three really interesting people in the ladies room that night, all which could possibly result in future business for both Carrot Creative and Digital DUMBO. All in part because I had to charge my phone – in a bathroom – at a bar – at 9:30PM – in Austin at SXSW. You never know who you are going to meet, so be friendly, be open minded, and see every person as a new friend or business opportunity.

This article is copyright © 2012 

We’ve always been known as the most fun company on the block, and at the same time we’ve always been just as serious about who we hire. Thankfully, those people that we now call Carrots helped us grow from a tiny startup to a small company to a global family. Our culture still feels like we’re that that small basement startup, but Carrot Creative has had the opportunity to grow and mature right along with our work, clients, and employees.
We’re trying to grow this family of ours with even more of the best so we want to make sure candidates know what they are getting when they apply to Carrot. From our application process, to culture, to offered benefits – yes, benefits like 401(k), health care, dental, vision, and your weight in Cheddar Bunnies. Carrot.is/hiring was created to do just that. Visit the page and you are taken to every possible open position, information about our culture (but you already know about that), benefits, and even an explanation of what to expect after you’ve put in your application.

We put a lot of consideration into each and every application and we wanted carrot.is/hiring to reflect that process. We respect each applicant’s time and effort and really wish we were able to respond to everyone. We predict that this will become increasingly difficult for us, but we are making efforts to improve that process. In the meantime, check in with Carrot.is/hiring, check in with the orange couch, and stay connected!

This article is copyright © 2012 

Disclaimer: This is a technical post on html and css, intended for those who are very familiar with the languages.

The value of clean semantics

There are a lot of web activists that promote semantic markup, and very early in my journey into front end dev I got swept up in this. There’s something really beautiful about writing really clean html, with no extra elements or “utility classes” (classes that you put on your elements in order to recycle a css code block and not have to copy and paste).

The real defining characteristic of super semantic html in my mind is that nearly anything relating to the styling that can be pushed back into the css, is in the css and not the html. This is precisely the reason that css frameworks rub me the wrong way – they provide an advantage by saving you time writing generic ui and css boilerplate, but they also burn you big time when they ruin your otherwise shiny clean semantics with a bunch of garbage classes and ids like 'span-14 push-5 btn-large'. And don’t get me wrong, this is not the fault of the authors, it’s just the cost of writing a css framework so that it’s flexible. But it is still not ideal.

I would like to propose that we do this in an entirely different way. Now that we have been blessed with dynamic css supersets like sass and less that are very accessible even if you are terminal-phobic, we don’t need to dry up our css by wrapping reusable code in a class and applying it at the html level, we can push this back to the css level using mixins. And while we’re at it, we can take advantage of dynamic css languages’ other awesome additions to make our reusable modules even more flexible and customizable. Double win.

Rewriting the famous ‘media’ class

Let’s get an example. I’ll rewrite one of the most famous ‘css-drying’ classes of all time — Nicole Sullivan’s ‘media’ class — and push it back to the css level, saving hundreds more lines of ugly unnecessary html classes from Facebook’s news feed. And while I’m at it, I’ll make it way more flexible and user-friendly.

The following will make a lot more sense if you have read or review Nicole’s article, as I’m re-writing her code

Here’s the code (I’ll explain it in detail right after, promise)

=split($margin: 10px)
    $left: $margin
    $right: $margin
    @if type-of($margin) == list
        $left: nth($margin, 1)
        $right: nth($margin, 2)

    overflow: hidden

    & > *
        overflow: hidden
    & > *:first-child
        float: left 
        margin-right: $right
    & > *:nth-child(3)
        float: right
        margin-left: $left

Usage is pretty straightforward. Whenever you have an element that would normally have class='media' on it, we can strip that right off the element (ahh, the freshness!), and move the style back where it belongs, in the stylesheet.

// html
<div class='comment media'> goes to <div class='comment'>
// sass
.comment
    +split 

If that’s not enough for you, we can shave off even more code by declaring them all in once place. For example, if you have three elements that all require the ‘media’ class called “post”, “comment”, and “friend”, you could do something like this

 .post, .comment, .friend
    +split 

and whenever another element needs it, just add them right in to the list.

Now on to the flexibility. While using Nicole’s solution, you need to add 3 or 4 additional classes to the ‘media’ object in order to get it to behave correctly. With this mixin, you don’t need a single extra class. In addition, you can use any type of element you want, whether it’s an <a> or a <figcaption>. Completely clean html, written exactly the way you want.

In addition, although margins are set to 10px by default, you can optionally pass the mixin a parameter to customize the margin size.

.comment
    +split(15px)

If you want to get really specific, you can pass two values, left and right, to have different margins on each side. This uses some of the more advanced aspects of sass, but the simplicity and flexibility it affords is amazing.

.comment
    +split(10px 20px)

A brighter, easier future

This is just one small piece of the framework that we’re working on right now at Carrot. But unlike more popular frameworks like twitter’s bootstrap and zurb’s foundation, you can write clean html, just the way you like it. In addition, every piece is ultra flexible, so you can make it look like your own site, not someone else’s (although it will include well designed defaults for when you need them). And when you need it to get out of your way, you won’t have to spend hours hacking at someone else’s code or changing classes across your html, you can just swap out pieces where you need them.

This is the next evolution of front end development. Instead of utility classes, there will be utility mixins. If you aren’t using sass or less, I would highly recommend picking it up. And if you are still using frameworks that force classes and styles on you, start rethinking how you code. It can – and will – be better.

References

• SASS Language
• LESS Language
• CodeKit Compiler
• LiveReload Compiler
• SimpLess Compiler
• ‘The Media Object Saves Hundreds of Lines of Code’ by Nicole Sullivan
• Twitter Bootstrap
• Zurb – Foundation

This article is copyright © 2012 

Our hack was an attempt to see how the camaraderie of your social sphere could influence everyday consumption habits. Using the Tendril API, we allowed users to track their real-time electrical energy consumption data in comparison to that of their Facebook friends. In addition to being able to visualize trends in energy usage between you and your peers, users were able to commit to energy saving goals. These goals could then be shared on your Facebook wall in an effort to educate the public.

Above, you can see a screenshot of the energy consumption
comparison between you and your Facebook friends.

I am proud to say that our app took home prizes for Best User Experience and runner-up in the Tendril Energy Internet and Smart Home App Contest. It was also demoed by Tendril at DistribuTECH, the utility industry’s leading Smart Grid conference in San Antonio, Texas. It’s refreshing to see a company like Tendril taking advantage of opportunities like this Hackathon and is a testament to the fact that social media can really change the world.

The Green Carrot Team celebrating their win with Eric Shiflet of Tendril.

In addition to learning about how information technology could influence consumption habits, we also learned how an extremely limited amount of time could influence the workflow of our team. Rather than following our conventional methods for producing a web project, we chose to use a more organic approach. In the interest of saving time, our team utilized Google Drawings to create an interactive wireframe that allowed all of us to collaborate in real-time. Opportunities like this hackathon give creatives the ability to test out new methods of working together and if any part of this experience seems interesting to you I would highly recommend attending one in your local area.

This article is copyright © 2012 

San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives

The Carrot Way

Always Be Working Yourself Out Of A Job

This article is copyright © 2012 

We work in a world heavy with management, red tape, legal mumbo-jumbo, and an overall disdain for fun things. This landscape is perhaps the most rugged in the lands of technology companies. Carrot has abandoned this world. They’ve taken to space as a crew of self-proclaimed pirate astronauts.

This is what I found most appealing about the prospect of working at Carrot. I dealt with my fair share of management-heavy organizations. I was tired of the mundane work days and felt it was time to move on to something better. Working at a company that genuinely trusts their employees and actively encourages them to have fun was something I wanted in on.

After visiting the Carrot Headquarters for my interview, it became obvious that they disregard traditional business dogma where employees end up being treated like untrustworthy hooligans. Carrot is full of people who are genuinely passionate about what they do. In such an environment, you don’t need managers, supervisors, team leads, or any other non-workers to whip employees into action. Instead, they’re all actually excited to do work… and to do a damn good job. A few natural side-effects become apparent in such an unconventional workplace:

1. Work can actually be fun. When co-workers trust one another to do their jobs, they’re able to have beer, video games, and other non-worky paraphernalia in the office. Everyone needs a break at some point. It’s best to be able to actually enjoy it.
2. While working with passionate individuals, employees will inherently learn from one another. Nobody makes a better teacher than someone interested in the subject they’re teaching.
3. NO TPS REPORTS.

I was absolutely thrilled when I got the job offer from Carrot. I obviously took the job and look forward to working with my new family away from home. I hope that together we’re able to continue demonstrating that happy, motivated employees do the best work. Everyone deserves to be happy with their work.

This article is copyright © 2012 

While my favorite thing about Carrot is the people and being small enough to know everyone’s favorite food (note to self: pick up peanut butter filled pretzels for Dan), it’s still exciting that we’re large enough to offer great benefits that rival any New York agency. We’re still working on that free cafeteria, but we do have medical, dental and vision insurance plans. We prefer that our team members spend their time worrying about how awesome the work they’re creating is, rather than how they’re going to pay to get their tonsils out.

In truth, there’s only one thing missing from Carrot — you. We’re growing steadily and, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re right smack-dab in the middle of taking over the world. We can’t sail this pirate ship without a full crew, so check out the positions below that we’re looking to fill. Think you’re a good fit? Drop us a line/email/pigeon/parrot/baked good.

Developers
Carrot does things a little different than the average agency. We’re looking for devs who will have an opinion and cringe at the phrase “code monkey”. Everyone is a creator at Carrot, and we mean that.
Check out the full description here (PDF).

Strategists
Did you play Risk as a kid? Are you the bomb at Connect Four? If so, we want to talk to you! Carrot is looking for a strategist who geeks out on data, has experience managing marketing/sales funnels, and relishes the idea of being measured on ROI.
Click here for the full description (PDF).

Assistant Account Executive
Do you have to-do lists for your to-do lists? Have others referred to you as their lifesaver, the one that helps keep everything together and running? Carrot needs support from a note-taking, calendar-scheduling person like you. Think you can help a brother/sister out?
Check out the full description here (PDF).

If Carrot sounds like a place you’d fit in, we want to hear from you.
Go ahead, fill out an application!

I may be one of the younger Carrots on the team, but I’ve had a lot of jobs at a lot of different companies. In my experience, Carrot Creative is the single most amazing company I have ever had the honor of being a part of. It’s not just that I feel like a part of a team when I come into the office, but I feel like I’m part of a family when I leave the office. We look forward to hearing from candidates to help our family grow!

This article is copyright © 2012 

Introducing: Platlas from Carrot Creative on Vimeo.

Here’s a quick look at the people and thinking behind Platlas, the first ever social media platform atlas. Meet the engineers, managers and research analysts that made Platlas for Facebook come to life. And see for yourself exactly what all the fuss about, and how you can use Platlas to better understand the countless interactions and connections that are possible on Facebook.

This article is copyright © 2012 

We’re here in force at F8 and jazzed about the platform changes in store at Facebook, some of which we’ve been honored to build with via our work on the The Daily Facebook app.

We will be following up to this post soon, with our additional thoughts on what this means for users, brands and what will surely be a leap in the evolution of how we share, experience and archive our daily lives.

Announced today:

Timeline: The story of your life in 3 pieces… All stories, all apps, a new way to express who you are.

Essentially, Timeline organizes your life – as you’ve shared it on Facebook over the years- for exploration. More importantly, it will allow users to better chronicle their lives moving forward (as well a brand new level of experiences), with ease. Apps will facilitate this new level of content on the Timeline, at the user’s request. Facebook will present history to the user in a “best of ” format, but will allow users to hide content as they choose, or highlight items that Facebook may have missed. Timeline will also launch with a full-fledged mobile-side experience. Privacy settings will be available for Timeline, and individual pieces of content on it.

At first glance, it’s beautiful.

A New Class of Apps: Define an action and publish it.

We’ve experienced Communication and Gaming apps to date. Now, Facebook is revolutionizing experiences for Media (Music, Movies, TV, News, Books) and Lifestyle (Exercise, Food, Travel, Fashion). Users will be able to connect to anything in any way they want, which will allow them to create an enormous amount of new connections and shared discover shared experiences. Users will experience a new permissions screen, detailing exactly what will be published to their Timeline.

Driving this, is the New Open Graph.

• “A Frictionless Experience”: Users need not be interrupted by Share prompts because activity will be fed to their Timelines. Lightweight material will be fed to their Stream, with popular or pattern-content highlighted in the News Feed to help other friends discover it.
• “Real-time Serendipity“: This is where the Ticker comes into play most. As users interact with media and content in real-time, their actions are shared live in the Ticker. The power of this is demonstrated effectively by our own client, The Daily: as users read news (through Facebook-connected or native services), their friends will have the ability to read those specific articles as well. Effectively, this offers “Serendipitous” experiences facilitated by Facebook and a user’s favorite apps.
• “Finding Patterns“: As items hit the newsfeed, Facebook will recognize patterns and showcase overlapping behaviors of friends, for effective recommendation and discovery. Users also receive Notification when their friends discover through them and interact with media through their ticker feed.

Fascilitated by the Canvas apps, Facebook can now bridge the connection between their users and the experiences of their users across software and websites. Ticker items that indicate a friend is listening to a song or watching a film will not only link to the content, but launch the experiences immediately, inline, for the user’s friends.

The “Like” stories are expanding to other verbs: “Chris Petescia watched to Star Wars” for instance. The stories generated by a user’s App interactions hit the Newsfeed, Ticker and Timeline. Wherever users interact with applications and media (for which they have opted into for publishing), it will feed back to their Timeline.

Timing: Facebook will provide access to Developers (like us!), immediately. For everyone else, it will be rolling out over the next few months and likely, the Timeline itself will be relatively sparse for users initially.

Synopsis: The new features rolling out to Facebook are all about having access to and sharing the history of your life: what users have shared in the past, and the wealth of new experiences that Apps will help facilitate for you in the future.  On the flip-side, it’s also about discovery and shared experiences as users see and interact with the ongoing history of their friends’ own experiences.  Everything Facebook users already share, and everything they will now be able to share, will be logged to the user’s personal preferences on their Timelines. Everything is personalized, and real-time feedback and interaction on content will determine it’s value.

Note: some of this post contains paraphrasing and partial quotes from various Keynote presenters. Thanks to Adam for helping out with detailed notes!

This article is copyright © 2012