Ideacodes - San Francisco

Ideacodes congratulates our client, Aydin Senkut, on Felicis Ventures‘ new $40 million institutional fund and new website. Felicis Ventures focuses on early-stage mobile and Internet investments and has invested in more than 60 startups, and 15 of them have already been acquired.  In Aydin’s words: “Felicis Ventures came a long way since its inception late 2005 and our first investment in January of 2006. We are really excited to announce our first Institutional Fund in the amount of $40 million along with our newly re-designed website.” The Wall Street Journal talks more about Felicis Ventures in their article, ‘Super Angels’ Alight.

Ideacodes co-founder @emilychang is featured in Mashable’s 15 Developer/Hacker Women to Follow on Twitter.

Writes Jolie O’Dell:

Everyone should know at least one woman who can code her way out of a wet paper bag.

While women developers, computer programmers and hackers of all stripes are by far outnumbered by men in their field, they’re hardly nonexistent. They blog, they tweet, and they do fantastic work to keep the Internet afloat. We’ve chosen to highlight 15 reader-recommended tech women here; if you know of others who should be on our radar — specifically women with coding skills — please do let us know about them in the comments section.

Some of the women on our list are “Internet famous.” Some, less so — for now at least. Some have worked at big tech companies like Google and Apple and Adobe. Some are startup employees or fly solo. Some are hardcore hackers, some are web design-focused. We’ve even got a hardware geek on our list.

With a big hat-tip to all our friends on Twitter who recommended these women, here are 15 technically skilled women (in no particular order) to follow.

Ideacodes co-founders, Emily Chang and Max Kiesler, were asked for a comment by the New York Times’ Room for Debate online discussion site about the iPad two days after the debut of the first WiFi version in the U.S. The post, titled The iPad in the Eyes of the Digerati, also includes opinions from Tim O’Reilly, David Gelernter, Liza Daly, Craig Mod and Sam Kaplan. Specifically, the question asked was: “some reviews have said the limitation of the iPad is that it doesn’t fill an obvious need. Can you see the iPad as a new medium — rather than just a bigger iPhone or smaller laptop? How much does the form factor of a device (the iPad is very likely to spawn competitors) drive the creation of new types of content and affect how content is read, heard, watched, etc.?”

Our response:
Part of Apple’s success is its ability to create products that don’t fill an obvious need, but through attention to design and user experience, produces something that delights users and challenges conventions. This was the case with the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad.

Tablets have been around for some time, and at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, there were numerous tablets with multi-touch capabilities from various manufacturers.

Whether everyone needs a tablet is debatable, but it’s a natural progression from desktop computers to laptops to smart phones. As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, our devices are becoming more mobile and connected. The iPad exemplifies the further shift toward simplicity.

Where you once needed to buy and install software to write a document, you can now use free online services; where you might have needed an external hard drive, you can now backup to the “cloud;” where you once had to be technically-proficient to publish online, you can now publish a blog just by emailing content to a service. For people who mostly want to browse the Web, send email, listen to music and view photos and video, a tablet may be sufficient.

The fact that the iPad is bigger than an iPhone and without the physical keyboard of a laptop changes its use, and as a result, changes user behavior. It sits easily on your lap, like a school notebook. And it’s big enough for two people to use it to play a game of chess.

By combining the intimacy of a simple screen with the the tactile quality of multi-touch, the user experience is quite different that with other devices. This creates another venue for content producers to reach their audience; and another format on which designers can create interactions.

Halle Tecco‘s piece at Forbes, 20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter, highlights ”women with a skill for putting their hearts and complex issues into 140 characters.” Of Ideacodes co-founder, Emily Chang, she says: “@EmilyChang is a designer and entrepreneur in San Francisco. Her twitter stream is full of fascinating and creative links to all things design–giving followers reasons to think outside the box.”

Ideacodes worked with Honk on the original design and UI for their private beta release. Honk is a social platform for car shoppers that gathers and shares opinions and insights from like-minded people to make the process of discovering cars simple, social, and most of all, fun. Powering Honk’s search tool is a social recommendation engine that analyzes opinion and profile data from hundreds of thousands of new car buyers from diverse backgrounds. The result is a unique set of data that allows consumers to search for vehicles based on who they are as an individual, not just the vehicle’s body type, price, and fuel economy.

Ideacodes co-founder Emily Chang is one of three judges for HOW Magazine’s 11th Annual Interactive Design Awards. Entries range across media – web, DVD, motion, kiosks – and disciplines, and will be judged on communication/message, navigation/usability, visual design and technical strength. Fellow judges include Liz Danzico, co-founder and Chair of the new MFA in Interaction Design Program, and Sean Donohue, VP, Creative Director of skinnyCorp. Winning entries will be featured in HOW’s April 2010 Design Annual.

Ideacodes is thrilled to be working with Mind Over Media, a team of content and creative experts whose clients include the New York Times, Harvard Business School, Estee Lauder and American Express. Ideacodes is providing a range of services for several of Mind Over Media’s projects, ranging from web strategy, UI and UX design, to open source development.

Emily Chang, designer and co-founder of Ideacodes, has been included in WE Magazine’s 100 Women Bloggers to Watch in 2009. WE magazine is a “woman’s online magazine, an International Digital Business & Lifestyle Magazine that made it’s debut in the fall of 2006. Our focus is on the total woman. WE’s audience consists of women who want to explore great destinations, improve their outlook on life, learn quick and easy ways to get and stay healthy, fine out about the latest technology gadgets and information, get some networking tips, become inspired as they read about women making a difference in the world and even ideas for great entertaining and learn how to more effectively and efficiently market and promote their business on and off the web.”

Ideacodes is excited to announce that our design work on gdgt is live. gdgt is “a new kind of technology site — a social gadget platform that enables you to connect with the community through your gadgets, and connect with your gadgets through the community. It’s a place for you to engage with your devices and hang out with people who are as passionate about their gear as you are.” Congratulations to gdgt’s founders, Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, on creating this next generation gadget platform.

Ideacodes had the pleasure of working with the social responsibility division of MTV Networks International on the launch of the microsite for Cherry Girl, their newest global talent. At MTVCherryGirl.com, visitors can find out more about her intriguing philosophy of life. The MTV audience will be able to check out this exciting new discovery on-air, online and via mobile when she makes her debut on the channel as part of Earth Day 2009 (April 22). See more about the project in our portfolio.