Here at Thinkun we work with a diverse range of clients building awesome websites and web apps. We’re growing and currently looking to add a junior/midweight PHP/MySQL/JavaScript developer to our team. The position will be part time to start with and may grow to full time in the future. Days of week and working hours are flexible. Apply below or here.

You’ll work on web and mobile projects across most of our clients, which come from diverse industries including sports, education, finance, publishing, consumer electronics, childcare and more.

We want someone who’s passionate about writing efficient and elegant code. You should shave a strong knowledge of MySQL and optimising queries for performance improvement. You will primarily code in PHP5 and sometimes use frameworks such as CodeIgniter. Javascript is increasingly important for web projects and we use jQuery a fair bit in our front-end design. You will also need a good working knowledge of HTML5 and CSS3. Experience with WordPress theme implementation and plugin development is desirable.

We value learning. You will gain skills by being regularly challenged by new tasks that you may not have experience of, but will be expected to research about and add to both your knowledge and the company’s collective knowledge.

Our office is in the Flourmill Studios, a heritage conversion of an old flour mill in groovy Newtown. The Flourmill is home to a broad range of creative businesses and is close to Newtown station, as well as being cycle to work friendly. To apply, please fill out the form below.

To apply, please fill out the form below:

Here at Thinkun we’re proud to announce our first publicly available, totally free plugin for WordPress, Thinkun Remind.

What does it do?

Thinkun Remind is a simple but effective plugin designed to allow you to send a branded and personalised HTML or text email to anyone, such as a customer you’d like to remind to leave feedback for you, right from within your WordPress Dashboard. This can be used for almost any HTML or text email templates, and provides an easy interface for a user of any skill level to send a personalised HTML email.

Current Features:

• Create your own HTML or text emails and reuse them.
• Preview these templates as fully rendered HTML before sending.
• Include and manage custom fields to personalise the email, which can then be filled out to populate variables by even the most novice user on the Send Email screen.
• Export a history of all emails sent as a CSV file.
• Plus more to come…

Where can I get it?

You can always download the latest version (1.1.3) from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Questions? Just ask.

To promote their latest business mobile devices E6 and E7, Nokia have created an online book featuring the stories of seven Australian Entrepreneurs. We attended the launch of the online book yesterday at ‘Simmer on the bay‘ in Sydney and captured some good bits of the question-answer session (shaky iPhone video alert!).

Five of the seven entrepreneurs featured in the book were present and were interviewed at the launch, including (from the left, after interviewer):

Jaimie Fuller, SKINS
David Handley, Sculpture by the Sea
Hayden Cox, Haydenshapes Surfboards
Will Young, Campos Coffee
Abigail Forsyth, Keepcup

The online book ‘In Hindsight’ can be viewed at http://inhindsight.nokia.com.au.

P.S. Check out Thinkun on Facebook.

Are you a MySQL champion?

Are you at home with all sorts of data handling? Have you used PHPmyAdmin extensively? Do you write SQL statements in your sleep? Are you available immediately to work at our Newtown offices either part time or full time for 2 weeks?  If so, please apply here or use the form below.

A brief description of the requirements:

You will primarily work on a project requiring a large amount of data manipulation and reporting. You will be required to import, clean, sort, filter and combine data based on rules that will be provided to you. For each request given to you, you will write the SQL statements needed and save the output as a dataset.

You must also be fairly proficient with Microsoft Excel. PHP programming skills are complementary but not essential.

Our office is in the Flourmill Studios, a heritage conversion of an old flour mill in groovy Newtown. The Flourmill is home to a broad range of creative businesses and is close to Newtown station, as well as being cycle to work friendly. To apply, please fill out the form below.

*Update*
This position is now filled.

When I was a kid, I played a game called Monster Mash.  You basically created a Playdoh monster and then pitted your monster against your opponent’s monster by rolling the dice and taking pot shots at smooshing one another.  I really did think it was quite superb, which is probably why I’m enjoying watching the Googles and Facebooks of the world take the gloves off.  This post is the first in a series that looks at the goliath that Facebook is becoming, and who’s getting smooshed along the way.

Our subject for the first part of this series: Is Facebook going to be the death of webmail?

As far as I can tell, people have been talking about this possibility since late 2007, but there are two new pieces of information that make all the conjecture a little more solid.  The first thing:  In January 2011, a report from ComScore revealed that total web email usage was down by 8% in the United States over the past year, with teenagers ditching email at the highest rate.

The statistics really are quite startling.  For those users between the ages of 12 and 17, usage was down by a colossal 49%. Usage was down 1% among 18 to 24-year-olds, and 18% among 25 to 35-year-olds. Usage was also down significantly in older age groups – 8% among 35 to 44-year-olds and 12% among 45-54-year-olds.

The second thing:  This survey was completed just a couple of weeks before Facebook launched its new messaging system that combines email, instant messaging and text messaging, meaning that everyone who’s on Facebook will have access to an ‘@facebook.com’ address for mail.

There are no prizes for guessing the rest of the story. The same survey also found that younger users are now spending more of their online time on social networks, representing just under 15% of all the time they spend online.  Here in Australia, we actually spend more time on Facebook each week than the Americans, according to a Nielsen report done in 2010.

Going even further than the personal user, due to the increased use of social tools both inside and outside corporate firewalls, and the changing demographics (i.e. within a few years majority of users entering the workforce would belong to the Facebook age and would continue to communicate with colleagues via Facebook and Twitter), Gartner predicts that by 2014 20% of business users will be using social networking services for communication instead of emails.

Deny, deny, deny

Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg denies that they’re trying to kill off free webmail providers, but there are signs of panic in the ranks, particularly at camp Google. When you look at the numbers, it’s easy to see why knees are trembling:

Email by numbers:

• Hotmail: 362 million users.
• Yahoo!: 273 million users.
• Gmail: 193 million users.
• ‘Facebook.com’: Potentially 500 million users for its new messaging service.

Facebook’s new email system is modelled on instant messaging and on-line chat and will allow people to simplify their communications regardless of how they choose to do it with both Facebook users, and non-Facebook users. Texts, email or instant messages will all come into one feed and users can respond in any way they want. One person could text a friend, for example, who will see the message come up on their Facebook page instantly and respond via an instant message or email.

Zuckerberg says that his new toy isn’t email, but it can handle email, along with all the other different ways that you choose to communicate, creating a seamless integration that is bound to make life easier in a world where you sometimes feel like you need to create an account to use the bathroom.

With added Facebook love like entire conversation histories going back years being saved in users’ accounts and spam being completely filtered out, it really is a jab to the wobbly bits for any of the webmail providers. And it begs the question – why would you bother going outside that system to send email, when pretty much everyone that matters to you is inside.  If you’re anything like me – you have more friends on Facebook than you do in your address book.

Foot stamping and pouting

Even though Zuckerberg has donned his halo and a ‘Who, me?’ expression, the signs are that people at Google are not happy.

Google is now blocking a Facebook feature that allows users to automatically import Gmail contact data into Facebook, a move it says it made because Facebook refused to allow the export of contact and friend data from within user profiles.

Perhaps for Google though, all the foot stamping and pouting comes a little too late, because for a huge (and growing) percentage of the population, Facebook and the Internet have become synonymous, and Google is most useful for finding the people you know on Facebook.   Email is just sooooo 90s.   Sceptical?  Try to think of the last time someone who’s a friend of yours on Facebook sent you a joke or a link to something interesting via email…

Google’s answer (or should I say answers?) to the Facebook phenomenon have been a little pale.  In our next post, we’ll look at Orkut, Google Buzz, and the new Google Plus 1.

Background

Sancta Sophia College is a residential college associated with the University of Sydney, with three streams to their business:

• Accommodation for university students
• Out of semester accommodation for the general public
• Hosting of events on the college premises.

The college’s old website wasn’t effective at defining  these separate business streams, nor was it geared to two other critical functions – keeping student residents up to date with events and news, and keeping college alumni feeling connected to the college, which is critical to fundraising.

In addition to those problems, the old site was in need of a design freshen-up, and it housed a vast amount of information, which needed to be re-organised and also extensively re-written.  What’s more, Sancta weren’t taking advantage of the growth in social media and sharing – especially appealing to the college’s primary target audience of university students.

Project objectives

1. Build a new site that enables continuous updates by college staff to make the site dynamic
2. Promote the business streams by incorporating key information for each on the home page
3. Bring events to the fore so that they are well publicised and attended
4. Engage the college alumni
5. Make the large amount of information from the old site useful and accessible
6. Update the site design
7. Take the first small steps towards social media integration

Project execution

Built on WordPress, the new Sancta Sophia website benefited from a complete rethink of the architecture of the site, and the use of space on the home page to promote Sancta’s business streams.  Thinkun edited down the site copy to make it more web friendly, and incorporated a Sancta Twitter feed as well as an easy to update event calendar on the home page.  These work in combination to ensure Sancta events come to the notice of all the different types of site visitors promptly.

Also on the home page, Thinkun brought Sancta news to the fore, by presenting the news blog-style with a set of keyword tags that ensures the prompt location of news content that’s pertinent to each type of site visitor, whether current resident, prospective resident or alumni.

Design-wise, Thinkun implemented a colour palette, shapes and imagery that complemented the architecture of the beautiful Sancta buildings and grounds.

Site features

• WordPress implementation with event calendar functionality
• Site architecture that defines content related to business streams
• Integration of Twitter feed and social media sharing mechanisms
• Blog used as mechanism to categorise and convey news related to type of site visitor

Project results

The new Sancta site design was tested on a representative group of current residents, with unanimous agreement that the new layout was more informative and visually appealing than the previous design.

Site visitors now gain a far better feel for the essence of the college.  Prospective residents are able to get a better feel for what it’s like to live at the college, while current residents and alumni can become much more linked in to daily life and special events.

Background

Playground Weekender is a unique four-day music and camping festival, with a target audience made up primarily of people under the age of 40.  Every

year the festival has been held, their website has been designed and programmed in Flash.  This caused a number of problems:

• Flash is not compatible with ‘i’ devices such as the iPhone and the iPad, which means that the entire site was not accessible for people trying to view information about acts and tickets using those devices.
• Building a site in Flash is not the best way to ensure that search engines can index site content, which can mean that these sites don’t rank as well in search results.
• Any changes to site content need to be made by a Flash programmer
• Each year, the site had to be completely rebuilt from scratch

Project objectives

1. Build a site that makes the festival’s web presence mobile
2. Utilise the festival’s poster artwork to ensure that the site is still as visually appealing as a music festival site should be
3. Put the festival’s organisers in control of the ever changing site content
4. Enable fast, flexible and appealing viewing of video and imagery across all device types

Project execution

Thinkun built the Playground Weekender website on the WordPress content management system, rescuing the team from the mercy of the Flash developer who used to control the site content.  The unique site design mimics the look and feel of a music festival poster and retains the graphic artwork that is the Playground Weekender’s signature style. In addition, imagery from previous festivals displays beautifully across a myriad of mobile devices.

Site features

• Built on WordPress with video and image gallery plugins
• Puts the Playground Weekender team in control of frequently changing content
• Delivers content to the most important target group on the run

Project results

Thinkun introduced a new way of thinking to our client, which means that for the first time, they were able to stay in touch with the ‘i’ audience.  Added to that, we’ve saved them a heap of money because they don’t have to rebuild their site every year and they aren’t beholden to a developer for every single site update.

Visit the site at http://www.playgroundweekender.com.au

Background

At the beginning of 2010, Australian Formula One star driver Mark Webber came to Thinkun looking for a website that was as slick as his driving.  Mark’s old site was looking dated, and was built on a bespoke content management system that was also ageing and unwieldy.  Because it was awkward to update, the site really lacked a dynamic, up to the minute feel, and therefore wasn’t engaging his thousands of supporters, or doing a good job of showcasing his news.

Project objectives

1. Build a good looking new site that reflected the new Mark Webber brand
2. Make the site far more dynamic and interactive so that it would become a frequent destination for his supporters
3. Develop the new site in a way that was easy for Mark’s team to maintain and add to over time
4. Add functionality to distribute news direct to supporters

Project execution

Thinkun built the new Mark Webber site on our favourite open source content management system – WordPress.  Designed in conjunction with FutureBrand, the site was constructed with one main goal – to give Mark an active voice and presence among his legion of supporters, and to allow them to answer back. Thinkun also got Mark onto Twitter with a custom designed page background and a feed that appears on Mark’s home page.

Mark’s site now makes his supporters feel like they are ‘in the know’ about all aspects of his racing career from his early days right through to the blow by blow accounts of his spectacular 2010 season.  The site incorporates template-based newsletter functionality and enables supporter comments on Mark’s news, as well as on his new book, which is sold via the website. Comments are moderated with just one click by the Webber team.

Site features

• WordPress implementation with Flash elements
• One click moderated commenting
• Integration of Twitter feed and social media sharing mechanisms
• Template based newsletter functionality with interchangeable email lists
• Flexible image, video and audio galleries allow for easy expansion

Project results

A happy client and happy supporters are Thinkun’s most gratifying results from this project.  In addition, Google Analytics statistics report nearly half a million visits to the site over the past year, peaking at a huge 18,282 on one day.  There has also been steady growth in number of unique visitors to the site.

For 2011, the site is being updated to incorporate even more interactive elements, expanded galleries and details of the upcoming grand prix season, which starts in March.

If you find the process of writing and sending paper cards at Christmas somewhat challenging, Thinkun has the solution – e-cards.  With a Christmas e-card, we can single-handedly save you from writer’s cramp, stamp and envelope licking toxicity, and postal service ineptitude (we really should start wearing capes and masks).

Consider the advantages:

• With everyone and their aunty on email these days, you can send them far and wide
• They can be built to suit almost any budget
• They can be customised in ways limited only to the imagination
• You can track delivery and responses
• You escape the boring stock photography that looks like it’s been circulating on Christmas cards since 1978.

But are they impersonal?
Gosh no! In fact, in contrast with your predictable ‘Hallmark’ greetings, an e-card can be the most personal Christmas message you’ll ever send. They come directly from you, are personalised by name to the recipient, and contain imagery and a message that are as unique as you are.

So – what are your options?
E-cards can literally be as simple or as jazzy as you’d like them to be, and where your e-card falls on this scale is guided by what you’d like to spend. For instance:

The most basic:
A simply designed html email with images and a personal greeting to the recipient.

A little more fancy:
A personal greeting with animation and perhaps sound as well, designed in Flash, hosted on the web.

All singing, all dancing:
An email containing a link to a personalised, dynamic greeting that allows the recipient to interact with it, hosted on a website for you by Thinkun.

Request examples and a quote today.
If you’d like us to show you a couple of examples, or brief us on your requirements to get a quote, just fill in the form below. We’ll get back to you in the twinkle of a reindeer’s eye.

Are you one of those people wondering what to do with the existing Facebook page you have for your business now that Facebook Places has arrived?

By ‘claiming’ the physical location of your businesses as a Facebook place, you will suddenly have a brand new page on Facebook. This geographically aware page has it’s own wall, photos and even an FBML tab. The long and short of it is that if your business only has one physical location, you can actually merge your two pages. For details, get your hands on this PDF and learn all about Facebook’s plan to help you manage your new pages and places. Happy FBing.

Facebook Places- Guide for Businesses