If I a friend asks me to help him/her produce a website, one thing I will almost always ask first is:
Do you need it to be cost-efficient?
It’s almost a given that it must be a cost-effective solution, right?
Well, it’s not that easy. I feel I have to point it out, because often we loose track of expense and efficiency when lots of time and effort have already been invested into a particular platform. And therefore, homework is everything.
Many more questions will necessarily follow, of course, but without knowing whether or not cost efficiency is high in the priority list, then the sky is the limit on:
How… ?
Who… ?
When…?
Where…?
Why… ?
and
What… can be used to create and maintain a good site.
The folks at devious media have come up with a great chart that will help anyone looking in the year 2011 to adopt a production tool suitable to owners, administrators, and users alike. It compares features and stats of three very popular open-source content management systems (CMS) (WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla) that have matured over the past few years to become leaders in their market spaces. And it does so using clever icons that help you remember the information. Kudos to them for a creative and didactic design.
It is by no means a comprehensive list of features and data, but it should be sufficient for the average user.
There are many more CMSs available: open-source, proprietary, commercial, free, enterprise-class, personal, cheap, expensive, easy, difficult, complex, simple. There is no shortage of products available today, in fact there are so many options that it might be hard to find the most adequate for the job. But if you are in the market for quick results, check out these three first, and you’ll be happy you did, because… how should I say it?
It’s the cost-efficiency, stupid.
Virtue of Blue
Dutch designer Jeroen Verhoeven has created a large chandelier adorned with 502 blue butterflies, each one meticulously cut from photovoltaic cells.
Powered by its own solar energy, this piece of art playfully explores an economy of light through innovative materials, while drawing connections between the beauty and power of nature and the importance of sustainable energy… or, you know, just something trippy to stare at while you sip a few cocktails at the Blain|Southern gallery in London.
Powered by sapphire-blue solar panel cells, the chandelier is intrinsically self-sustaining as it absorbs the energy of daylight to fuel its own illumination. The cells have been cut into the shapes of four different breeds of butterfly that seem to flutter around a central flame-like hand-blown glass bulb, their iridescent wings glinting in the light.
The semiotics of this design are powerfully significant as the butterflies become signifiers of the light’s self-sufficiency. In nature, butterflies also power themselves using their wings to absorb the rays of the sun, in turn raising and sustaining body temperatures to levels necessary for their survival.
Lectori Salutem
The desk is imbued with a symbolic value as it conveys the intimacies of Verhoeven’s own personal life. While ostensibly a desk, produced through a combination of highly-skilled craftsmanship and carefully-programmed technical processes, the personal mark of the maker is strongly evident within the work as two silhouette portraits of the artist’s design collaborators, Joep Verhoeven and Judith de Graauw, are subtly shaped into its undulating surfaces.
Thus, the piece combines design functionality with an artistic rhetoric that subliminally communicates the importance of Verhoeven’s immediate creative circle. Constructed using highly-polished steel, the traditional industrialism of this material is inverted to produce an elegant and seemingly lightweight object. Through a delicate distribution of weight, the piece combines streamline curves and flowing contours to create a physical equilibrium and an illusionistic sense of movement and speed.
Verhoeven is showing the Virtue of Blue chandelier and his Lectori Salutem desk at London, UK gallery Blain|Southern.
Of all technologies available to us in this time and age, the bicycle is about the only one I can identify with at an emotional level. I may have been 4 years old when my love affair with 2-wheeled vehicles began, and many moons later, the same fervor invades me when a new design of the arguably most personal of all means of transportation shows up. Here’s a Danish one.
The Grace One is best described by the words of Chuck Squatriglia of Wired.com’s own Autopia blog when he asked “What would happen if you crossed an old-school Cannondale with a modern downhill mountain bike and then made it electric?”
The Cycle EXIF blog, which sent this to Chuck, calls it a “Teutonic behemoth.” And Derp, a commenter on Cycle EXIF, calls it a “Stillborn Transformer.”
Its CNC-aluminum frame is fitted with eurofighter and Formula One parts, and it has a top speed of 40 mph. So it’s a hell of a lot cooler and more powerful than a scooter, moped or Segway—but the 1300 Watt lithium ion-powered motor (batteries hidden in the frame) will only take you between 18 and 31 miles (50km) on a one-hour charge (depending on weight).
That’s not enough to make it a serious mode of transportation, but if you live in an urban area it might make sense. You won’t need a parking spot and you can ride it in the same areas as a traditional bike.
The official line from Grace:
The Grace One model is the “world’s first street-legal e-motorbike.” It is the answer to potential clients asking for a more affordable version of the Grace e-motorbike.
The frame and CNC-milled aluminum blocks that make up the bike and motor are made in the same factory in Berlin – somewhat appropriate as this looks more like an old East German moped than a push-bike. How much for this intimidating piece of machinery? The Grace One City bike is available built-to order only, and will cost you just 4,199 Euros.
Grace offers four other models: Grace Pro Race, Grace Pro Universal, Grace Pro City, and the Grace One Universal.