BARITCHI

NOT! that ain’t true. It’s just about us all being skeptical. There isnt’ a single honest service provider  on the Romanian market that could really offer the service he promised and agree in a signed contract.

One of my colleagues from the Kub division was complaining today about the problems with his Kub clients.

[ Kub is one of our professional critical business solution division - hosting only. We’ve came up with the idea while realizing the need for a secure hosting. This of course after having problems with delivering some of our projects to clients or simply couldn’t handle the deadlines because of the hosting supplier. ]

So, after signing another contract and setting up a new account, my colleague sent all the technical requirements to the client ( how to set up the new account on different mail clients, how to access the email account from webmail…classic procedure… ).

After only 30 minutes he received THE CALL : ” the hosting isn’t working! how come I can not access my email account now when I’ve just signed the contract. What kind of service is this?!”.

My colleague gently asked if he proceed with the correct email set up steps. … that already wasn’t relevant enough as the client got worried already.

So what was the problem? he didn’t follow the set up steps as indicated  (haven’t checked some basic requirements ). :)

wel..and that’s one problem we have with Kub. except for the times when the users have no disk space and they believe there’s something wrong with the service … eh

so, the point is: Kod has indeed a BIG problem: skeptical users :)

—

Irina

Since we moved closer to water the separation happened :) here we are: half of the team creates, consumes large quantities of coffee and designs in a large open space at the ground floor, and the other half “mingles” upstairs while enjoying a beautiful view from their balcony… or should I say “the balcony”?! hmm

Don’t know why but a rumor started and the ones “playing” upstairs are now called “the ones above us” :))  and - don’t know how or why - in only 2 weeks we all have developed a strong sense of property :))

If I wouldn’t know, I would definitely believed there are 2 separate agencies: “I need a document from upstairs”, “can I take a tea mug from you guys?” or “maybe the guys upstairs can help you”, “try to find one downstairs”

It’s fun anyway and there’s a certain constructive competitive spirit in the air … both upstairs and down here [ we do keep something in common :P ]

FACT: it only takes one a couple of seconds to get from an office to another and there is no significant difference between the two offices

FACT: after posting this I gotta go upstairs and it’s tricky - I really must come up with a good reason for this. what if I’ll become one of them?!

Today we discovered a copycat of a website made by us.

So, this is the original:

and here is the copy:

Can you tell the differences? :)

Nice work douchebags, our lawyers will be glad to meet you.

I was working a couple of minutes ago with Andrei and Flo at a custom-made map for our web site contact page. * better say the guys were working on that..I was happening to be there :P

well, the thing was that they both wanted to create a document to help our visitors find the address easily.  the document could also be printed and so Flo asked me to come up with a “Think before you print” message. We then realized that this messages are less likely to influence one while printing ( in excess ) and- to be completely honest - is a clear proof of hypocrisy from all of us these days.

So, why not come up with more powerful messages if we are indeed aware of the impact of using paper in excess?

And there it was: * I have to add that it was really late on a Friday evening and we were all pretty tired…

- Stop externalizing memory. Use technology in better purposes while saving trees.

- Think again before you print it: you just might hear a kitty go “meow” while falling off a branch.

- Save trees today and allow tomorrows’ personal hygiene…

- Give future generation of living creatures a chance to life.

- Would you rather go to a picnic in a restaurant? Save the woods.

…well, lets just say that we’ll come up with a social movement in this purpose. :)) good day and Think before you print, ok?

—

Domnica

take a peek at what InfoNews will look like. It is one of our latest projects and the latest company that joined our group.

You all might know InfoNews.ro by now as being one of the oldest Romanian press review web-site. After our first interaction with Catalin and Liviu - the guys behind the business - as partners on different online banners and PR campaigns, we finally decided that it is time for InfoNews.ro to align its image and functionality to the technology of our times and to better serve its visitors.

It was not very difficult to do as so and come up with the new look as you all could see - in a couple of hours the new InfoNews.ro will be officially launched. The main idea underneath the “re-make” is to improve the web functionality for a start.

While planning the re-launch we decided to join together in a new business and affiliate BARITCHI PR team as well to the redactional team from InfoNews.ro.

More about the project and the results after the launching.

—

Andrei

It’s not hard to sell a residential project when “what you see is what you get” but because of the real-estate market situation these days, persuading a possible customer to visit the construction site or already finished leaving spaces is getting more difficult by day.

Together with our client - the developer of the largest residential complex in Romania - we’ve come up with a solution that could easily convincing customers into visiting the project site. It’s not like taking the first step to the Moon but connecting people helps a company to open new doors.

We’ve realized three important aspects in balancing professional social media presence of a brand with the personal presence of the people behind the brand, because in the end this is what is all about.

- We’ve connected faster and stronger with possible customers and potential business partners. Sharing personal life experience or just impressions can be a connection catalyst for it opens doors for discussions.

- We associate a human face to the brand. And this comes along with a greater recognition and reliability for your brand.

- We’ve built a more quickly following and sustained the brand. Giving your customers a chance to connect to your business and your brand not only builds loyalty more faster, but it helps spread the word.

How apparently? With a theme party by the pool in a week-end evening.

Everybody really felt comfortable during the entire process: from the first invitation to the last goodbye.

—

Nadia

I don’t have enough time right now to write about our new playground - new offices space that is - as my colleagues are still facing the furniture transportation. :) yes, I’ve manage to open the Mac and let them deal with the less fun part. So sssttt please for now.

But I was so eager to share the thought that although we’re leaving Bratului Street - as we used to call it - we’re enjoying the idea of a new beginning. For this is what all the team shares right now without even knowing it yet.

So let it be in good luck!

* gotta run, my colleagues are looking for me. We’ll be back with pictures

—

Domnica

We recently redesigned our site. Why did we do this so fast? Because our earlier version felt incomplete and wasn’t giving the right message about what we do and how we do it, also the design wasn’t giving us the feeling we were looking for when we browsed it.

We decided to go with something a lot simple, something minimal that would be easy to read, easy to browse, simple to add more content and more sections (this was impossible in the earlier layout because we need to respect our grid system).This was the final result and we are proud to say that we love it.

The challenges were quite awesome and fun from every point of view. Florin took his grids to the next level drawing something scalable and elegant that would allow us to use most of the content we already had from the previous version including the expression engine weblogs with all the custom fields we already had.

Initially we wanted to go for a HTML5 markup but the time frame was too small and considering the poor support and the shit load of bugs necessary for IE we decided to keep it XHTML Strict. The markup is as simple as it can get (from my point of view at least), but I believe there is room for improvement. All the fading and project image navigation is achieved with 1 simple plugin that I totally fell in love with (jQuery Cycle, thanx Matt for this), so that turned out to be an unexpected surprise.

Adding the Avenir font face using cufon (witch in my opinion was the best solution because there’s not much text that you would want to copy paste from around the site) had it’s ups and downs: implementation was beyond simple, no extra margins or crap in the markup, hover support (buggy with sifr, not supported by flir or typeface.js), had to use quite an ugly hack to achieve the tabbing between different elements on the site (project image list, contact page switch between map and form).

The job form. We wanted a friendly approach to the people that want to join our team. The huffduffer signup form seemed like a very interesting solution but it raised/raises a lot of controverse because of the idea itself. We decided we’d go with it because it’s a beyond elegant and friendly solution that suited our needs and ideas, so to everyone saying “you stole that”, think about the stuff you saw on other people’s websites that “inspired you in a really creative way”. A major problem with the job form was the upload CV option witch is the result of Courtney’s effort to get that working properly on all OS (you all know Mac and Windows Flash Players are totally different right?). Also we had quite an argument/debate on wether to make the Thank You text the submit button or have a separate submit button under the phrase. Some people found it natural to click the Thank You text others had the reflex to look for the Send/Submit button before anything else, eventually we found a middle way that says Send and Thank you at the same time.

Also we’d like to thank everyone for the lovely feedback we’ve been getting, the www love and anyone who gave their 2 cents about how can we make it better and create an even more beautiful experience.

—

Razvan

and so we have decided to celebrate our web site launching together with the present playground - as we like to call it - on April Fools Day.

Why? well now, let see:

1. we’ve dedicated all of our time to our customers projects and leave our agency image on second place

2. we had so many ideas on how our web could look that we’ve kept for almost 2 years just an intro page on our web domain

3. every single time we were about to finalize our web a new better idea popped into our heads

in a word : ‘cause it’s ironic

but after all this time we’re proud that we passed over one of the biggest challenges we faced with: rebranding ourselves.

—

Domnica