Soma Design » News

Panic Goes Nuts

Matt — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:31:40 +0000

Well, maybe not, but the folks at Panic have just initiated a 50% off sale. Of particular interest for web designers and/or developers are their lovely Transmit (best FTP client ever) and Coda (one window web development) offerings.

A List Apart Survey

Matt — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:02:18 +0000

A List Apart has just announced their 2nd annual Survey for People Who Make Websites, after getting a whopping 33,000 people to do so last year. If you’re reading this, and you do web work, go take the survey. They publish the results for free (see last year’s results), and the data this produces is a tremendous help for understanding the makeup of our field.

One Million Domains

Matt — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:20:30 +0000

The dot-ca top-level domain (TLD) has just surpassed 1,000,000 domains, and to celebrate, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has launched the One Million Domains campaign. Soma Design was featured in this promotional site alongside many other interesting uses of the dot-ca TLD.

I was also recently interviewed by IT Business in connection with this campaign, which was a pleasant experience. Later in the same article, it is claimed that 3 in 4 Canadians prefer a dot-ca website when shopping online. That means that you have an instant “in” with your fellow Canadians, if that is indeed your target market.

All in all, I’m quite happy to be on the dot-ca domain, and look forward to the interesting opportunities afforded by being sure that every dot-ca domain is owned by a Canadian individual or business.

Automattic Raises $29.5 Million

Matt — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:25:30 +0000

Automattic, the fast-growing company behind the popular WordPress blogging software (heavily endorsed by Soma Design) and the free WordPress.com blogging service, just announced a $29.5 million round of funding.

One of the fascinating things is that the NY Times, that bastion of old media, was one of the investors. This makes total sense once you look a little deeper and realize that the NY Times are using WordPress to power their ever-expanding collection of blogs.

What this means is that WordPress has a long, bright future ahead of it with the people who loved it before they had any idea that they could make money off it still right in the thick of things and getting paid well to boot. It means that small web design shops like ours can expect WordPress to continue being a terrific and evolving platform upon which to build websites (like this one) for years to come.

On more personal note, I must extend a hearty congratulations to Matt and the team at Automattic for being rewarded for their terrific work. Good job!

#7 in Google Search!

Matt — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:30:07 +0000

After a mere week online, Soma Design now shows up on the front page of a Google search for soma design. We’re doing even better on google.ca, where we currently come up as #2. (We come up as #1 if you restrict the search to canada only.)

While there are numerous other organizations out there with some variation on the moniker “soma design,” we felt that the world was big enough for another one. Also, since somadesign.ca was still available, we decided that there was definitely room in Canada for us. It’s a big country!

As for the name, why did we choose it? It’s short, catchy, easy to remember and hard to spell wrong. It also allows me to indulge my nerdy side, as it’s a greek word that translates to body. Body conjures up associations of organic, unity in diversity, simplicity in complexity and a flair for sensible (yet quirky) design that I hope will pervade all that we do here.