pelago

Web design and development company signs up for One Percent for the Planet

(CSRwire) SANTA BARBARA, CA – October 16, 2007 – Pelago, the California-based web design and development firm and creator of Intervals, the popular web-based task and time management system, announced today that it has signed up for One Percent for the Planet, an alliance of businesses committed to leveraging their resources to create a healthier planet. Members donate at least 1 percent of their annual sales to environmental organizations worldwide.

This decision is yet another step in Pelago’s ongoing corporate commitment to social and environmental responsibility. The web application company already helps businesses reduce their use of paper and environmental impact through Intervals, its flagship application, and improve employee work-life balance.

“We were seeking to further integrate what we talk about, what we believe, and how we act,” says Braden Jones, co-founder of Pelago, of the company’s decision to join One Percent for the Planet. “It was a ‘put our money where our mouth is’ type of thing for us, and we believe in who One Percent for the Planet supports.”

Pelago is committing at least 1 percent of its annual sales to the non-profit program, joining the ranks of more than 700 other companies and individuals committed to the initiative, including founding members Patagonia and Blue Ribbon Flies, musician Jack Johnson, Native Energy, Alima Cosmetics, The TYF Group, and North Shore Productions. So far, One Percent for the Planet members have donated a total of more than $21 million to environmental groups such as Carbonfund.org, As You Sow, and Step It Up.

“Now is the time for us to take steps forward and pay attention to the things that matter to us,” says Michael Payne, Chief Architect of Intervals and a co-founder of Pelago, of Intervals’ decision to sign up for the program. “It is very easy to get involved in the rat race and have time fly by-seven years have for us. This is the year we are committing to making a few priority changes.”

“I think a lot of small companies don’t think they can afford to do this,” says Payne. “We hope to show that even small businesses matter and have global impacts, and that focusing your priorities matters. We hope that all businesses that think the environment matters will take positive steps as a company to make a difference.”

About Intervals
Created by Pelago, Intervals was originally designed to solve Pelago’s own struggles with tracking time, billing clients, and knowing where projects stood in real time. Targeted primarily to creative and communications services companies and small businesses, Intervals is a powerful tool for anyone who wishes to ease the daily stress of organizing and managing people, workflows, projects and time. Learn more about Intervals at www.myintervals.com.

About Pelago
Pelago is a Santa Barbara, California-based web design and web development firm founded in 2000. Pelago specializes in developing highly intuitive web sites and reliable web-based applications, and injecting them with solid business sense and functionality. Pelago clients include JD Power and Associates, Nexxus, Xplane, Network Hardware Resale, and TenetCare. Learn more about Pelago at www.pelagodesign.com.

We are contemplating making our email more secure to spoofing attacks and are looking into SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and Domain Keys.

http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
http://www.openspf.org/

We have never implemented either, but they both sound like a really good idea.

I am curious if any others out there have had success with this approach? Implementation tips or nightmares? Alternatives?

Six years is far too old for any excuse, especially the one we were using for not redesigning our web site: “We’re too busy with client work to redesign our own site, that’s a good thing, right?”

That is not a good thing. We finally decided to take ourselves more seriously and solved the problem by making ourselves a client. We had a rushed timeline and no budget, but we had to get it done. And we did. In a record four weeks.

The driving philosophy behind the new design is that Pelago is a place where lifestyle and hard work are equally important. We live in a city bordered by mountains and ocean but we often forget they are there. We want this new site to convey some of the playfulness that is Pelago.

It was important that our new design not get caught in the crossfire of photoshop filters that have exemplified most of the web 2.0 movement. Gradients, drop shadows, glows, reflections, and their ilk, have their small and overcrowded place. The Pelago site goes beyond the current fads prevalent in web design, because Pelago was churning out good design well before web 2.0 got started, and we’ll still be doing so when the trend dies out.

A few of our peers and colleagues has asked us what’s up with the ordering of everyone in the Team Pelago section of the site. It doesn’t appear to have any hierarchy or rime or reason. In our truly flat org chart style, the order is randomly set the first time you visit the page. It doesn’t reload each time the page is refreshed, but it is saved in your session.

We tend to be a pretty opinionated and passionate bunch and we’ve never had any luck with photos of our office or our crew. We usually hide behind our site instead of put ourselves out there :-). Geordie at SpeakePhoto did a great job with the black and white photos. We’ve had nothing but positive feedback.

Thanks again – Michael

Intervals Revs Up Online Suite of Business Management Tools

New document support feature completes robust task and time management system

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Pelago announced today a major upgrade to Intervals, its flagship time and task management system. Intervals now features full document support, including upload, transfer and version tracking capabilities. The new functionality turns the robust web-based suite of management tools into a complete and fully mobile business application.

Intervals document support represents a new trend in asynchronous web applications, which give the user real-time interaction and feedback and which leave other applications still operating in linear interfaces far behind. This has far-reaching implications for the business world, as it strives to figure out what’s real and what’s hype in the Web 2.0 space. Pelago has filtered out the practical from the hypothetical in this brave new world of the web and built a solid and responsive business application.

With the document support upgrade, users can now work with virtually any file type, retain full version histories, link documents to specific projects and tasks, search for files within projects or universally, and share files with other team members regardless of geographical location or time zone. Documents can even be tagged with keywords for easier searches. Storage quotas depend on the type of account the Intervals user has.

The new functionality peels away yet another important layer of inefficiency experienced daily by designers, programmers, writers, producers, project managers, and their clients: the email attachment. Documents sent by email can be easily lost or confused with earlier or later versions.

Even FTP, iDisk, and other file sharing mechanisms fall short, as they are stand-alone solutions that cannot be fully centralized and integrated with a company’s workflow. With Intervals, all of the pieces of a project sit in one organized, centralized work space: team member and client accounts, tasks, files, notes, instructions, timesheets, fee structures, and work modules.

“The impact of the Internet on business today cannot be overstated,” said Braden Jones, Pelago’s CEO. “Companies are demanding full workflow centralization and 24/7 universal access, and Intervals delivers on both counts.”

About Intervals
Created by Pelago, Intervals was originally designed to solve Pelago’s own struggles with tracking time, billing clients, and knowing where projects stood in real time. Targeted primarily to creative and communications services companies and small businesses, Intervals is a powerful suite of tools for anyone who wishes to ease the daily stress of organizing and managing people, workflows, projects and time. Learn more about Intervals at www.myintervals.com.

About Pelago
Pelago is a Santa Barbara, California-based web design and web development firm founded in 2000. Pelago specializes in developing highly intuitive web sites and reliable web-based applications, and injecting them with solid business sense and functionality. Pelago clients include JD Power and Associates, Nexxus, Xplane, Network Hardware Resale, and TenetCare. Learn more about Pelago at www.pelagodesign.com.