It’s a stylish travel guide that tells a curated story about the most interesting and unique independent eating and shopping establishments in New York City. It takes you on a vibrant, visual journey through NYC’s neighborhoods and helps you discover the local gems.

We at Insight had the pleasure of designing this gorgeous app. We worked with Sue, Sam and the gang at TravelShark to create wireframes and define functionality. Our talented Ellie Childs created the sophisticated, simple, beautiful design. Then the folks at TS had their development crew make the app a reality. Great teamwork and a wonderful end result.

Go ahead and download it. Just $1.99.

Whether you live in NYC or are just visiting, you don’t want to miss this.

Be tempted.

If you’d like us to order one for you, please shoot me an email at info@insightdesigns.com along with your size. We need to place the order this Friday (May 4), so please let me know by noon on Friday.

And a quick update on our fundraising efforts. So far, we’ve collected $6,176, and with Insight’s dollar-for-dollar match, that’s $12,352 for kids with cancer! Our goal is $50K.

If you’d like to donate, please go to our team page –
http://couragetours.com/2012/team/acureinsight — and click on any team member’s name to make an online donation. Or mail a check made payable to Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation to Insight Designs, 2006 Broadway, Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80302.

Thanks!!!

As many of you know, last year my son Laird had an extremely aggressive,  but curable cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma. Thanks to amazing medical care at Children’s Hospital and to the love and support of so many, he is now a happy, healthy 5-year-old who loves riding his bike, reading, cooking, wrestling, playing cards and building legos.

Laird’s story has inspired everyone at Insight to ride in this July’s Courage Classic, a 157-mile, 3-day bike ride with 10,000 feet of elevation gain that benefits Children’s Hospital Colorado. Laird is even planning to ride 35 miles of it (we’ll have a tag-a-long stashed along the route to help him if he gets worn out). He figures after what he went through last spring and summer (multiple surgeries, hundreds of hours of chemo and lots of other horrible stuff), this ride should be a piece of cake.

Our team hopes to raise $50K for the oncology department at Children’s to help other kids with cancer. Insight Designs will match the first $10K raised. And my family will personally match the next $10K. We hope you’ll help.

To donate, simply go to our team page –
http://couragetours.com/2012/team/acureinsight — and click on any team member’s name to make an online donation. Or mail a check made payable to Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation to Insight Designs, 2006 Broadway, Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80302.

If you’d like to ride with us, please join our team! Go to http://couragetours.com and click “Ride”, then click “Join a Team” and select “A Cure Insight”. (Registration is filling quickly, so act soon.)

Thank you so much for considering. And Laird has another scan on Friday, May 4; please keep your fingers crossed for him.

Blogs have increasingly become a vital part of a comprehensive online marketing strategy.  It seems everyone is on the wagon.

Blogs can be used to share information and business updates.  By sharing information relevant to your industry, you can establish yourself as an authority in your field.  Blogs can assist in search engine optimization by regularly adding new content to your site.  They can also help in generating qualified leads – people who are taking the time to read what you have to say are likely interested in your products or services.

But the decision to start a blog should be carefully weighed.  A poorly executed blog can be far more damaging than not having one at all.

Do you have time to blog?
For most people, writing a blog is a time consuming thing.  You have to come up with topics, do research, and then formulate your thoughts into well-crafted, grammatically correct prose.  And to be a truly effective blog, you need to do this at least once a week – yikes!

Of course you have alternatives to shouldering all of this work yourself.
•    Assign the task to somebody else in your organization, or even several people, so the workload is distributed.
•    Use a ghost blogging service – but just a word of caution on this tactic: ghost blogging is a rather controversial issue in the blogosphere.  If you are going to have a ghost blogger, be transparent about it.  Use a disclaimer that states that you aren’t actually writing it, but read and approve everything posted (and be sure that you do!).
•    Ask others within your industry to do a guest blog post.

Do you have enough content?
Do you have content you can regularly post that your customers – current and prospective – will be interested in reading and sharing?  There can be many things to blog about:
•    Opinions on industry topics
•    Tutorials related to your area of expertise
•    Answers to your most frequently asked questions
•    New hires
•    Product and project launches

After analyzing the pros and cons, if you decide you need a blog, stay tuned to Insight’s blog where we will explore ways to cultivate content, tips and tricks to make your blog work for you, blogging mistakes to avoid, and many more titillating tidbits of the blogosphere.

If you decide a blog isn’t right for you, keep in mind that there are alternatives:
•    Micro-blogging (i.e. Twitter or Facebook) is helpful if you are sharing links to other content or if you just have short bits of information.
•    Create a “case studies” section on your site where you can feature specific examples of your product or service benefiting your customer.  This allows you to specifically promote your company, as opposed to a blog, which should avoid directly promoting your business.
•    Add a news section to your site if you regularly generate press releases that get featured.

We will do our best as a company to avoid the typical teen behaviors of being withdrawn, moody or argumentative. But if you see us getting out of line, feel free to call us on it.

All kidding aside, thanks to everyone who’s helped us grow our business year after year.

And special kudos to our talented and dedicated staff – all of you are amazing!

Saving Face chronicles two women in Pakistan who have been disfigured by acid violence and the efforts of one doctor to perform reconstructive surgery to restore their faces and their dignity.

Let’s hear it for Jim Butterworth and everyone at Naked Edge Films and Saving Face!

Check out the film on March 8, 8:30 pm EST on HBO.

For more than 10 years, Java came to the Insight Designs office every day, taking his job as spirit lifter and security director very seriously. He barked at scores of delivery men and window washers, greeted hundreds of clients, and entertained everyone on staff.

He’s been the Insight Designs mascot since the beginning, gracing all of our holiday cards, having a bio on our website, and of course being the star of our gum packs this year. He took part in staff retreats and was always willing to help, even wearing a web cam during one of our holiday parties. He played endless hours of tug-of-war with Clint and Keith. He licked clean countless post-lunch tupperwares. He almost chased a tennis ball out of our third-floor window when John was playing catch with him. He went hiking with Monica near Leadville, got lost and ended up spending a day at the Lake County Sheriff’s Department. Once, he ate 5 pounds of uncooked pasta and then unloaded all of it on the sidewalk in front of Pasta Jay’s on his way into the office, after which he earned the nickname Pasta Java.

Outside of work, he enjoyed chasing squirrels, fetching tennis balls, barking at deer and just being outside. He spent most of his free time with Beth, running countless miles, hiking 14ers and snowboarding down Loveland Pass.

He cheated death twice – once in 2002 when he was hit by a car and again in November 2007 when he was diagnosed with cancer, a mast cell tumor in his lower abdomen. At the time, the surgeons at CSU said he might only have 2-3 weeks to live if they didn’t remove the mass immediately. But removing the mass also meant removing one of his hind legs, so we opted out of the surgery. He exceeded their expectations 100-fold, living another 4 happy, active years.

Java truly was a miracle dog. He is already sorely missed, especially by me.

Insight Designs hosted our 12th annual feat last Friday at Saxy’s Cafe in Boulder. Despite the frigid temps, more than 100 folks came, including our very first client Ed Cook from National Specialty Lighting. The gang from OIA is always a feisty bunch (see photo above of Ingrid punching Bryan). And several of our newest clients made their party debut, including Jim from Dot Hill, Brendan from Boulder Wave, Frank and Doug from Boulder Valley Velodrome, Luis from ROICblog.com, and Kellan from First Line Data (who’s new and improved site will launch later this month).

We ate scores of paninis (or would that be panini?) and pounds of chocolate.

We took lots of fun pix. See them here.

And we gave away fun prizes from some of our local clients, including champagne from Liquor Mart, a yoga festival pass from Hanuman Festival, and gift certificates to The Med, Brasserie Ten Ten, and Shug’s Low Country Cuisine (which is new to the Boulder restaurant scene).

If you missed the fun this year, be sure to join us for Holiday Party 2012! Mark your calendars now: Friday, December 7, 2012.

In the meantime, here’s wishing you and yours a happy holiday and all good things in the new year!

I ran downstairs not knowing what to expect. He handed me a copy of this month’s Yellow Scene Magazine with the cover “8 Best Places to Work.” I flipped inside and saw that Insight Designs is first. Wow! What an honor.

The article touts us and seven other Boulder companies for “the perks, benefits and respect” we give our employees.

When my husband proudly told my kids last night, my 6-year-old daughter astutely said, “Now everyone will want to work at Insight Designs.”

Check out the article “Yellow Scene’s Top Companies to Work For” on their website, or if you want to print it out and hang it on your wall, you can download a PDF here.

But I was happy to speak with Ryan Dionne from Skiing Business this week for a piece he wrote called “Your Website Might Suck.”

Check it out.