RussellStoll.net

After a year helping out the team at Columbia University’s Digital Knowledge Ventures, I’ve decided to wield the freelance once again.  I have a number of projects in the works including a youth spirituality community site and a website for another Catholic church in New York.  Look for lots of motion graphics work as well.  It’s good to be back.

Columbia University has proposed building a new campus over 17 acres of West Harlem in an area called Manhattanville.  The university had a pre-existing information website describing the project but it was sorely in need of an overhaul.

Russ built Columbia’s new site from scratch in XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a future-proof combination that works with all modern browsers and offers support for people with visual disability.

Visit the site at: http://neighbors.columbia.edu/pages/manplanning/

I’ve been a bit lax about posting recently.  The holidays came and went and that ate up a lot of my time.  But the real reason for my silence is a new part-time job at Columbia University’s Digital Knowledge Ventures.  At DKV I’ll be a site developer working primarily with Drupal and Joomla, two popular open source content management systems.  I’ll still be taking on new freelance work but at a more measured pace.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here.  Today, Russ launched a redesigned Malickcontractors.com.

Kudos to Erica Stoll for pushing pixels on this one.  Yes, she is Russ’ sister but there’s no nepotism in play here—she’s a pretty sharp designer.

The site features a Flash music player positioned in a frameset (so that the client-requested music doesn’t restart with every new page).  Instead of pop-up windows to handle the enlarged thumbnails, Russ used the Lightbox 2 javascript library for a neat image overlay effect.  Gotta love the elegant transition effects as you move from image to image. 

A fun project overall. 

I just finished two Flash animations and some general HTML edits on MedallionRetail.com.  Take a look.  The splash page intro is easy to find.  The second animation is in the Process section.

Anyone with a bit of curiosity about the future of the computer will marvel at Jeff Han’s work on an “interface-free,” touch-driven computer.  Manipulated intuitively with the fingertips and responding to varying levels of pressure, his computer certainly looks like a precursor of things to come. 

Follow this link to see video of Han’s first public demonstration of the computer, recorded February 2006 at the T.E.D. conference in Monterey, CA.  Simply mind-blowing.

Can anyone get me tickets to next year’s T.E.D. conference?