10.29.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 9.27 pm by daniel
In one of my rolls I do a lot of work with Hasbro and their i-Dog range. So looking at future expansions (look out for the iTiger, iFish, and iCy the Penguin) Allan and I note the only thing missing is a i-Purple Cow.
A silly idea and a few e-mails later, Allan has designed the iAmoeba and been featured on Seth Godin’s blog. Godin plugs in his usually brilliance, Allan hasn’t just designed an iAmoeba, he’s built one. And again the distance an idea can go, no matter how crazy, is proved.
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09.07.06
Posted in Site News at 11.06 am by daniel
Apparently doing something different isn’t always going to be received well by the Australian Fashion Week organisers. At least, that’s the way you’d perceive it if you opened today’s Herald Sun or listened to 3AW.
There’s a massive storm over MaraJoara’s decision to cast, with the help of Rogue Connect amongst others, their models without the assistance of any modelling agency. The result? Australian Fashion Week organisers reputedly saying models size 8 to 12 aren’t good enough for their event, and the whole of the Victorian media rallying on the side of MaraJoara. I’ve even received a phone call from 3AW today simply because I was involved in the casting.
Poor move by the organisers of fashion week.
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08.14.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 10.27 pm by daniel
It’s by far the quickest development Rogue Connect has ever done. What we’d have normally have spent a month doing has been achieved in 4 days.
We’ve partnered with Australian label MaraJoara to help find models for the closing show of the Australian Fashion Week Transeasonal Collection. We’re also looking for Australian guys to help take up the role of Mr. World Australia.
To help the casting process Rogue has created the casting websites (which you can find through the links above).
Good luck to everyone who enters!
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07.31.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 6.36 pm by daniel
In amongst various other projects that I’m currently working on, Rogue has set about launching its first ‘initiative’ outside of the members only site.
Called style spy, the initiative will aim to change the way in which fashion trends are measured and set. We’ve been working on it for some months now and are at a stage where we’re happy with the design (which ties in with Rogue Connect of course).
Expect to see it launched before the year is out.
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07.17.06
Posted in Site News at 1.36 pm by daniel
Saturday night heralded another fashion show in Melbourne, and this time I remembered to take along my camera.
I’ve put up most of the photos into my Fashion group at Flickr. You can also see them all in ‘Photos from Sabi Lingerie Spring / Summer 06 Collection‘ in the Lifestyle Blog at Rogue Connect.
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05.05.06
Posted in Site News at 4.58 pm by daniel
I came across this today at Seth Godin’s blog. Rogue Connect has been accused of being elitist, but even when applicants aren’t given membership we don’t rub it in their faces like Continental seem to do to paying customers.
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04.23.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 10.40 pm by daniel
After a few weeks of behind-the-scenes work, I’m proud to unveil the third major revamp of Rogue Connect, my exclusive social networking community.
There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work put into the new site. Allan, for one, has put together a fantastic design which was an absolute pleasure to implement. Not that it was easy, it was just such a major change that one couldn’t help but be proud of it. We went for a really exclusive feel with the new layout, and I think we got there.
There are plenty of subtle changes in the site, most of which our existing members will only notice. We’ve tried to provide a lot of extra functionality ‘on call’ through the use of scriptaculous.
Subtle changes aside, we’ve also snuck in a new feature; Smart Class. Smart Class is our version of an ‘old boys’ network, and we’ve used it to provide a mini-Facebook environment on Rogue Connect. As with the uses of scriptaculous, we’ve allowed ourselves to be influenced by ‘Web 2.0′ enough to implement AJAX into Smart Class. We achieved this using xajax, which is an awesome project that has earnt the plug!
Finally, we’ve also provided new profiles for the community. I’ll focus on these in more depth later, but we’re building a platform for rising fashion designers, and labels to promote themselves to a fashion loving community.
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04.16.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 10.41 pm by daniel
When we launch the latest major update to Rogue Connect (the current launch date is set for May 1) there’ll be a lot of obvious changes - none so obvious as the new feel of the site. Despite this, we’ve also been putting a lot of work into some very subtle changes. Both of these, I think, can be applied to most any website where the aim (or one of the aims) is to build a membership base.
The first is the usability and ideas behind the site. The changes we’re making at present lend themselves largely to the ‘getting real’ school of thought - something we’ve learnt largely from reading 37 Signals’ design and usability blog. They constantly highlight some really obvious facts, mistakes, and theories behind website and product development. While you don’t have to subscribe to their school of thought (I personally pick and choose), their blog has certainly been good at getting me to look back over what we’ve done for Rogue Connect. As a result, when Rogue relaunches there’ll be a horde of subtle changes, the most important of which I think is the new navigation system.
We’ve also put in place a lot of extra features into many of pages. Anyone who reads the Signals vs. Noise blog will think I’ve gone mad in saying that - surely that’s not “getting real”? Well we’ve provided them on call using Scriptaculous. Our theory behiind it is simple: If you don’t want to use a particular feature, it won’t take up room on your screen. But if you do, just click the down arrow and there it is, and you haven’t even had to leave the page.
The second big change is the story behind the site. Seth Godin has got me thinking about this a lot, in particular his book All Marketers are Liars. I don’t have the chance right now to go largely into detail - but in essence the most important thing is letting your personality come through. Our whole development of Rogue Connect is aimed at that. For one, we’re not some big company so bye-bye to the copyright line down the bottom. We’re also adament that ‘rogue’ is more than a name, but a lifestyle. Hello to ‘What it is to be rogue‘.
One final thought: we use Basecamp to help manage our development and marketing of Rogue Connect. Up the top of each Basecamp page it now reads “Rogue Connect: Not Just A Site. A Lifestyle”.
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04.15.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 7.42 pm by daniel
A (quasi) working preview of the new Rogue Connect design can now be found the site’s blog / news area.
It’s still a little rough, but it’s our current attempt to provide a working preview (and hopefully ease our members in to it) while experimenting with Joomla template creation.
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04.08.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 11.05 am by daniel
As I’ve just posted on the Young Go Getter forums Rogue Connect has a new design coming. We’re working on it at the moment, and have been for about a week now.
What we’re setting out to do is create more than just a design, more than just graphical elements. To us, this isn’t a redesign. It’s a concept, or it’s pushing one. It’s pushing what Rogue Connect is about.
We’re emphasising our exclusive take, we’re cuting back on some of the content on the main page that feels like filler (including the picture of the gorgeous Sienna Miller).
While we’re taking out design away from Web 0.9 to something in the field of Web 2.0, all we’re doing is working to drive home what makes Rogue Connect unique.
This is a mock design, and the content obviously needs work, but it shows the concept!
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03.31.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 10.42 pm by daniel
Flattery will get you everywhere;
I’m joining this site (with any luck) because it seems to be damned better than myspace, where the average IQ has to level at around 0.000001, give or take.
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03.27.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 10.49 pm by daniel
Looking over some of the applications for exclusive membership at Rogue Connect today I came across this application;
boring boring fella … dont know wat to write … just lemme in(please)… i wanna see sexy laydees
It seems that the essence of the site is getting across.
For reference, he didn’t get in. “Boring fella”? Just not rogue enough.
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03.26.06
Posted in Site News at 11.28 pm by daniel
I’m back from overseas today (a trip into the Far East), if you’ve been trying to get in touch with me I’ll get back to you asap!
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03.08.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 8.13 pm by daniel
For the first time on Rogue Connect we’ve invoked our exclusive status and deleted the accounts of people who have applied for membership, but have failed to be given it by our members. All up we’ve deleted over 100 applications, the list was simply becoming too long.
We are looking at ways of making this a process. Only around 45% of people who apply for Rogue Connect accounts end up getting one. That leaves a lot of applicants. Some are dormant and don’t return once they feel they won’t get in, others continue to tweak their profile hoping to get in. As we redevelop the membership and voting feature, it will definetley be the latter applicants (and our existing members) who are the primary focus.
The route I don’t want to go down is that of BeautifulPeople, their site deletes you after so many days (seven I think) which I don’t think is a good enough time to find out if people are ‘Rogue’ enough to get membership.
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03.01.06
Posted in Musings at 11.34 pm by daniel
Wow, it’s the sort of publicity a lot of people would kill for, but apparently only a girl named Tammy from Singapore can get.
Tammy’s had her mobile phone stolen you see, and video from it has been loaded onto the internet for everyone to download. I’m sure there’s the run of the mill videos in there, but the main one everyone seems to be after is of Tammy and her boyfriend ‘at it’ shall we say.
So how many people are everyone? Well enough it seems. According to Technorati the most searched things for this hour are Tammy. In fact, the top 6 in the most searched for are the likes of “Tammy”, “Tammy Video”, “NYP”, “Tammy Video Download”, and so on. In fact, it looks like she’s broken Technorati. Only 7 things are appearing in the top 15 (places 8 - 15 being blank) and the only other thing in there are A Level Results. Ho hum.
So does this put her on par with Paris Hilton? Tammy is an instant mini-celeb of some infamy - if people aren’t after the video, they’re after photos and pictures of her! The net is yet again proved to be an awesome marketing and word-of-mouth tool!
Now if Rogue Connect could only get that kind of instant publicity!
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