The most striking change on the web in the last few years is the increased usage of video. According to Nielsen, in March of 2005, approximately 55% of internet users had broadband or high speed access in their homes. Compare that to November of 2009 where that percentage had grown to over 90% in the United States.

JS Libraries are a powerful, customizable way to create interactive and dynamic interfaces for your homepage, features or portfolio pieces.

Here's what I find sexy: The perfect red lip and a complex e-commerce system with an extensive product catalog and zillions of SKUs! Lately, I've found myself really applauding the brand Sephora for the fantastic and cohesive user experience offered to their customers through multiple mediums on the web.

We make some pretty nice looking websites – our designers are pretty awesome at what they do. They create a plethora of custom art for every site that we the developers have to use to produce the site. Even though high bandwidth connection availability and internet connection speeds have rapidly increased in the last few years, no one wants to wait around for pages to load.

From last-minute Christmas shopping on amazon.com to working on design for DRIFIRE's webstore, our 2009 was chock-full of e-commerce. Here’s a rundown of the five most interesting and innovative ecomm site features of '09, from both inside the studio and out.

Any need you might have, chances are that ‘there is an app a plug-in for that”.

Award season is fast approaching in the marketing, technology and design world. While pop-culture aficionados have their Emmys Grammys and Oscars, we at Silverscape have the MITX, NEDMAs and Horizons (just to name a few).

SMPS Pacific Regional Conference, The Wave, Navigating Change. Since it is a grey November day here in Boston, I've included the perfect soundtrack.

Silverscpape is thrilled to announce DRIFIRE.COM is a MITX 14th Annual Interactive Award Finalist Finalist, Consumer Goods 2009. DRIFIRE is the leading producer of Comfortable Flame Resistant FR Apparel.

One of my pet peeves about blogs from creative interactive agencies is that they are often farmed out to prolific professional writers that produce lofty witty commentary on the industry’s latest superstars. Many go to the utmost lengths to attempt to convince you that they are innovative just because they say they are.

Hue-Saturation-Lightness (HSL) is a newly supported color specification in CSS3. Like RGB, HSL is a numerical representation of color with the use of three distinct values, Hue, Saturation and Lightness.

This morning, we learned Silverscape has been named number 17 of the Largest Web Design firms in the North East by the Boston Business Journal. If you don't know us, this is our TENTH year in business. (That’s like a million internet years right?)

As promised in my last post I will be discussing the new additions to CSS3 that will not only allow us to manipulate Opacity and Alpha.

Riiiing! Today we launched www.ascendentsystems.com! A division of our client RIM (the driving force behind BlackBerry™), Ascendent Systems allows users to automatically extend the identity and functionality of their business desk phone to any other device. Neato, right? As a collectively smartphone-obsessed company, this was a super fun project for us and we’re looking forward to more exciting engagements with RIM.

 If you want to know more about how to understand who is actually on your website, and you are responsible for the forward momentum of your firm at any level, you must become a Google Analytics GEEK. This is not the IT guy’s job. This is not the Webmaster’s job. This is Marketing’s Magic 8 Ball and most of you are not using it on a daily basis

Don’t get me wrong, I love design inspiration websites. In fact, I have a whole bookmark folder chock-full of them (favorites being designbombs, dezinspiration, ilovetypography’s ‘Week in Type’ series). These gems aside, many design inspiration sites seem to be steadily veering away from a presenting a collection of hand-picked favorites and more towards becoming indiscriminate mass-aggregators riddled with generic templates and tired web 2.0 tricks. So, here’s what I’ve been looking at instead...

The completion of the next implementation of ‘Cascading Style Sheets’, CSS3, by the World Wide Web Consortium is something I, and many people in our field are eagerly looking forward to.

The traditional Frequently Asked Questions page just doesn't do it for me. Let's reconsider why these pages exist, how they tie into an overall web presence, how they can be more useful to site visitors and what type of return these pages can offer the companies that build them (build them well, that is).

One of the things that I love most about being a designer is that I’m constantly learning – both inside and outside of my own industry. At Silverscape, we’re lucky enough to have a broad client base and it’s allowed me to get knee-deep in the science behind fire-retardant performance garments, what separates artisan chocolate from your run-of-the-mill Hershey Bar, the technology that propels secure data protection and control, and even the details of safety and environmental compliance within the construction industry. Getting to really know a client once they’ve come on board is an exciting process, but beginning an engagement with a client whose services are already close to your heart is even more rewarding.

Some people love good food, others love custom cars, comfy clothes or their morning coffee. Some people love video games, and some really love beer. Football season, naps on a Sunday afternoon, sewing, coffee, great chocolate and the new iphone – all things that people love.

Two or three years ago, Flash was our go-to technology whenever we needed to achieve really cool or advanced interactivity. More recently, we've really taken a liking to using Ajax to accomplish many of the same tasks.

What up, MTV; welcome to our crib. We’ve done some drastic redecorating, so ditch your shoes and start exploring our new Social-Media-powered digs.

We all know that times are tough. Everyone is working hard to get through this downturn to the brighter days that lay ahead. But, at Silverscape, we're proud to say that we're keeping busy with some of our most interesting projects yet! We were thrilled this month to launch the new website and e-commerce store for Taza Chocolate, and organic, bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturer, and the only chocolate maker in the US that produces 100% stone ground organic chocolate. Yum!