Even when you have a job like mine where you love what you do, taking time to do other stuff is important. Personally, I don’t need recharging per se, but getting to do other activities and gain new perspective is always a good thing. And ultimately I think it helps me do my job better. As we discussed in the post titled “Time Off” we talked about our goals for taking regular extended breaks from work as a company. Starting tonight we’re taking our first break. It’s going to be interesting as there’s a service to keep operating, clients to keep happy, and customers to respond to. But even though we won’t be completely disentangled from work responsibilities it really will be substantive time off. The kind where by the end you are so excited to come back to work you can’t contain yourself. (At least that’s the hope.

The blog is essentially closed during that time as well, as blogging takes time away from important vacationing activities, and we can’t have that. Don’t worry, the florists will still be making bouquets while we’re gone and we have some friends who’ll keep an eye on everything to make sure that nothing topples over.

These first few months of Jackson Fish have been extraordinarily exciting for us. And we appreciate all the support, positivity, and feedback we’ve gotten to date. We’ll be back Monday, August 20, 2007 bright and early, raring to go. See you then. Have a great summer.

As the lead flower harvester for the “florists” at They’re Beautiful!, I thought I’d share with you how the flowers were made.

To get some basic understanding of what it’s like to be a florist, I spent half a day job-shadowing Nisha Kelem, owner of Seattle’s Fleurish. We met early one weekday at the wholesale flower market where I observed Nisha and her team meticulously selecting ingredients for the day’s orders. They gathered an array of flowers, foliage, containers and interesting things such as long stem artichokes, pincushion flowers and tea leaves. We went back to her very chic Capitol Hill boutique, unloaded the van, and Nisha and her team began arranging straight away. What was really interesting to watch was that every arrangement I saw being created was truly unique. That said, there is quality and a touch that Fleurish has about their bouquets. They all seem to be so well-balanced, tightly structured in form, yet totally visually compelling through usage of interesting flowers/foliage selections. Although each arrangement I saw that morning was very different, there was an overall signature touch about them.

That really got us thinking about how to render the flowers for They’re Beautiful!. Just because the flowers are virtual didn’t mean we had to create them from scratch with pixels. We were looking for a style that was different and special; something that was more than a generic illustration. We decided on paper as our primary medium and headed straight away to Paper Zone where I was like a kid in a candy store.

Materials:

• Bazzill Basics Scrapbooking paper (double sided and color core)
• Tissue Paper (various colors)
• Sobo Glue (dries clear)

Tools:

• Self Healing cutting mat
• X-acto knife and extra blades
• bone folder for scoring
• 1/8 paint brush (thin handle of brush is used for curling paper)
• Tweezers (used to pick up tiny pieces)
• Fiskars No. 4 Mini Craft Scissors

Below are some “behind-the-scenes” shots of how I made the flowers. Some notes on what you’re looking at:

• There’s an image of my first test pilot “poppy”. It didn’t make it into the summer collection but I did learn a lot about breaking down the fibers in the paper to get it to be flexible.
• I used the handle of a thin paintbrush to curl the edges of the gerber petals.
• Creating the stamen and anthers required a slicing up a tiny narrow strip, tightly rolling it up, and lastly using your fingers to spread out the fringes.
• Getting textured grooves on the petals of the gerbers was simply scoring the paper with a bone folder.
• Dahlia petals had to be tipped in with tweezers.

From Uncov:

1. You send a bouquet of virtual flowers to someone
2. The other person must log in every few days and “water” their bouquet
3. Otherwise it dies
4. ???
5. You get laid

What an exciting last couple of days we’ve had here at Jackson Fish HQ. While it’s only a small first step in terms of the experiences we want to develop, we’ve been lucky to get a very fun reception for They’re Beautiful! First and foremost we wanted to thank everyone who’s checked it out, given it a chance, sent us feedback, and generally been willing to give our new app a few minutes of their time. Hopefully we’ll keep it interesting enough that folks will give it a few more minutes from time to time.

And since you’re probably not scouring teh internets for reactions (like we are) we thought we’d share with you some quotes from folks who’ve taken the time to write up their thoughts.

“Whatever magic is behind this wonderful application/service, it’s working. There’s definitely the Jenny Lam touch on the graphics here - everything is pixel perfect and drop dead gorgeous.” — Long Zheng, I Started Something

“I love that Jackson Fish’s home page banner is filling in with the “shops” they’re building — a neighborhood block with a fish monger and now, a flower market. Makes me want to visit.” — Marc Hedlund, O’Reilly Radar

“The coolest feature is the ability to embed the virtual gifts in another website, as I’ve done above. The “products” are visually stunning… …I’m going to refrain from watering my flowers. I’m hoping the wilting process is as visually interesting as the flowers themselves. Can’t wait to see if they actually show dead flowers in the widget.” — Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

“If you receive a postcard with an IP address link to click, hit the delete key instead. However, a bouquet of virtual flowers from They’re Beautiful is another story entirely.” — Security Garden

Of course, the reactions are not exclusively filled with lavish praise for the site (much to our surprise ;)), so we thought it only fair to share what some of the detractors think as well.

“The idea may seem a little odd.” — John Cook, Venture Blog, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“It’s an interesting concept but not handcrafted enough for me. Flower feels cold and very 3-d, don’t have that many selections… But I like the attempt to marry high-touch service with high-tech software… I am looking forward to their next project.” — Design Plus

Thanks again to everyone who’s checked it out and for the great feedback. And if you haven’t yet tried it, feel free to go send some flowers to someone you like.

You may have noticed that the crane has left and there’s a new store open for business on the street at the top of this page. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been steadily crafting our first Jackson Fish “Experience”. This first humble offering is They’re Beautiful! – Gorgeous, Free, One-of-a-Kind Flowers.

It’s our first small step in creating high quality branded online software experiences. A special word of thanks to our inaugural sponsor – Vosges Haut-Chocolat who are making these lovely virtual flowers possible. Here’s how it works:

Want to send flowers?

• Head over to www.theyrebeautiful.com and work with the florists to send a unique bouquet to your friend or loved one.

On the receiving end:

• You’ll receive e-mail letting you know your flowers have arrived. Your flowers are waiting for you at www.theyrebeautiful.com where you can enjoy your one-of-a-kind bouquet.

Want to enjoy your flowers indefinitely?

• Place your bouquet in your own virtual greenhouse and water your flowers so they don’t wilt and die (yes, your flowers will die if you don’t take care of them).

Want to show off all the lovely and thoughtful bouquets and cards that you’ve received?

• Place your greenhouse in your blog or other webpage with the EMBED code provided.

The florists have tons of fresh flowers in stock so feel free to go crazy.

Thanks so much for checking out our first offering. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we have enjoyed building it (and we’re not done yet).

Unfortunately, there are some products we use that have holes in them that their maker simply can’t fill (for business or technological reasons). Right now the music subscription services are in that situation. In comparing them recently I found that Rhapsody and Napster both claim over 3 million songs in their libraries but both have small (and not-so-small) omissions. I understand the logic behind what’s missing in some cases (Beatles, Zeppelin, etc.) but there are some smaller missing pieces that confuse me especially when the songs seem pretty minor and the other service has them. For better or worse these little landmines are a fact of these services right now.

For me Rhapsody is providing enough value that it’s worth it even with the missing songs. And if I have a playlist where I want that one final song that they don’t have in their catalog, I can rip my own CD and drag the track from the hard drive into the playlist so the playlist is complete. Great! Except for one small problem. The playlist I created is now a “local playlist” — it no longer roams. This sucks. Roaming is simply what I expect from all of my software. In this day and age I NEVER want my data to be tied to one particular machine if at all possible. Rhapsody does the smart thing by roaming my playlists, but then drops the ball at the 1 yard line.

I was thinking about this problem and it occurred to me that Rhapsody could keep roaming the playlist and rely on my to hook up the pointer to my mp3 on each machine. But then I thought, why even require that? Why doesn’t Rhapsody sync my local music files along with my playlists. Then I can fill in the blanks with my CD collection and make Rhapsody (cloose to) complete for my music listening needs. If the cost of roaming all these files is a concern, local track roaming could happen P2P between my machines. (Or charge for it as a premium feature. I’d pay!) I imagine there’s some fear about providing a service that roams potentially unpaid for copyrighted material. But Rhapsody isn’t about sharing per se. The feature I want just makes it so that I can make my playlist perfect, because, really, how can I listen to my Art/Progressive Rock of the 1970’s playlist without Misty Mountain Hop?

And note: (while not entirely analogous) it is possible when providing the workaround to come to some agreement with the copyright holders if they complain.

(And one more thing while I’m at it? Why don’t all music players provide the iTunes cross-fade feature between songs. I’m not a fan of the pause.)

While we’re partial to creating software to engage with audiences, there’s creativity afoot everywhere in the advertising industry. 7-11 at their own cost made over several of their stores to be Kwik-E-Marts in honor of the upcoming Simpsons movie. Exhaustive documentation of the Seattle Kwik-E-Mart can be found here. I must say that I generally avoid gong into 7-11s but I think this is cool enough that I need to make a pilgrimage and at least see if not buy a “Slushee”.

Not totally without efforts in the digital arena the 7-11 website has been remade into Kwik-E-Mart’s corporate website.

One noteworthy detail, 7-Eleven paid for the whole promotion. The amount of free PR they’re getting is pretty substantial from my inexact observations. The money they spent should be considered cheap relative to the brand awareness and character they’re building. 7-Eleven comes off as having a sense of humor as well as being creative.

And of course, helping brands express creativity via online experiences is a key focus of ours