Metal Toad office in Los Angeles
Metal Tudse in Denmark
In February a few Toads got to travel to Denmark to begin discovery on a new internet of things (IoT) project with a large wind turbine manufacturer. This is Metal Toads first foray into the European market and we couldn't be more excited to be working with a great client and new partner, Danish Aviation Systems. Earlier this week we announced the opening of our Los Angeles office, could a European location be next? You'll have to wait and see!
How much does a website cost? Initial purchase (1 of 3)
"How much does a website cost?" These are six words when spoken in sequence that most web developers dread. There is reason for this anguish; asking how much a website costs is like asking "how much does a house cost?". With this amount of information, you can't just use median sale price of a home, but have to include tents, tiny houses, and ridiculous mega-mansions in an estimate to truly get this comparison right (so the answer to this question could range anywhere from free to billions of dollars).
How much does a website cost? Rebuilding (2 of 3)
In my last article, I addressed the age old question "how much does a website cost?" from the standpoint of initial purchase. Like purchasing a house prices are all over the map and perhaps more importantly the initial purchase price of a website does not include the cost of content migration from the old website or the cost of ongoing maintenance. This is a lot like buying a new house: buying the house doesn't include moving costs or home maintenance.
How much does a website cost? Maintenance (3 of 3)
At the start of this three part series on website costs, I answered the questions of how much a website costs, and then called out migration and missing features as additional expense areas that are often overlooked.
A good framework for most people to help understand these costs is to look at buying a website like buying a house. After you've bought it you still have to move it (website migration costs) and maintain the house over time.
Secrets to project happiness using Git
I have worked with dozens of projects over my career, on platforms ranging from Drupal to Yii to Django to AngularJS to ASP.NET. Most of them have had a good, solid strategy for how to manage their Git repositories. A few notable ones have not.
Here are a few things I've learned for how to manage your repository to ensure a successful project.
Daimler Trucks North America
Daimler Trucks North America
An Engineering Firm with a Design Sensibility
We live in a man-made (or woman-made) world. Everything not sprung by nature was created by a human and has been designed. Whether it was well designed or poorly designed makes a difference, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. As humans, we know, we feel, when something has been well designed. We interact differently with something that has been well designed. We’re intrigued — we want more. When something is not well designed, it has the opposite effect. We grow frustrated, we want less.
How RFP Software Helps Metal Toad Be More Effective
Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by one of our vendor partners, RFPIO, to chat about RFP response. Since using RFPIO, my team has enjoyed many benefits that have streamlined our approach to RFPs and contracts while greatly improving productivity.
In this podcast interview, I share how Metal Toad is using RFP software to respond with greater efficiency and effectiveness. I also offer some great tips to help my fellow RFP responders be better at what they do!
The Post-Grad Search for a Different Kind of Company
As a non-techie in a tech world, job searching can be hard. Really hard. Add a recently minted liberal arts degree and a love for good books and long papers, and the probability of landing anything but a phone screen at most major companies is virtually eliminated. This is what I thought as I applied for job after job after job, wondering the entire time, what is it that I wanted to do again?
Unlimited PTO or is it Ultimate PTO?
What was the impetus that made us consider unlimited PTO?
For me it is simple. We trust employees with our brand and our clients — why treat PTO any differently? At Metal Toad we hire adults and treat them like adults. We have been offering unlimited PTO for three years now with great results and really no issues. On the other hand, we have saved thousand of dollars, time, and headaches not administering a PTO policy.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
At Metal Toad, where self-organizing and self-managing teams are encouraged (and even preferred), there is a lot of room and trust for individuals to make change. Because of this empowerment, I’ve had the privilege to try out and implement changes. Not all of my attempts have been successful, and some have benefitted from iteration, but it’s pretty cool to know that the opportunity to affect change is something that’s offered and supported here.
Discover, and Discover, and Discover
We just completed a huge, deep, complex, and super sexy Discovery for a client I can’t name. But I can say that the timing was tight, the expectations were high, the info going in was murky, and the result at the end was, as our VP of Engineering likes to say, “baller level ten.”
Becoming a Metal Toad Intern
Before starting as a marketing intern at Metal Toad a couple weeks ago, I was absolutely terrified. That had nothing to do with Metal Toad itself and everything to do with my lack of experience and fear of failure. I bet that sounds familiar to some of you, right?
Monitorama!
I just attended Monitorama 2017 in Portland, and I wanted to talk about my experience! I think it’s useful for me as a brain-dump and reflection about what I took away from the talks, but it’s also nice for other people to have some more insight into what the conference is about.
We're blogging this month and you should too
Angular 2: HTTP, Observables, and concurrent data loading
Angular 2 provides a new pattern for running asynchronous requests, called Observables. Here, we will review a few of the concepts and eventually see how to run multiple concurrent HTTP requests, with the callbacks running only after all of them have completed.
Author's note, November 24, 2016: Updated for final Angular 2.0 API. Updated on June 5, 2017.
Leading the Ethical Software Movement Part 1: Integrity
"Our brand promise, Leading the Ethical Software Movement, highlights how Metal Toad advocates an ethical approach to creating technology and doing business. Ethical software is not about our ability to craft the most elegant solution — though that is also critical to our success. It means doing right by Clients, partners, each other and society" — Corinna Gelster-Borgardt, Creative Director, in "Metal Toad's Process to a Brand Refresh."
The Power of a Gift
When the Client Services department was formed earlier this year, one of our key objectives was to create client magic. Client magic is defined as gifts, tokens, and authentic correspondence that delights our clients and ensure they feel the Metal Toad love. This is actually a reportable metric that I share with our executives and Advisory Board members to assess performance of our department. One of the ways we create client magic is by giving gifts.
AngularJS Query String handling using $location.search()
Note: This article refers to AngularJS v1.x only. If you're working with Angular 2 or above, take a look at the ActivatedRoute class, which can provide similar functionality. Updated on June 9, 2017.
Many times while developing an Angular app, you will find yourself displaying data in tables and filtering or sorting it. There are many tutorials out there to show you how to use Angular filters and ng-repeat to do this.