HorneNee Blog

HorneNee Inc. is proud to announce the launch of Bl(i)nktag Inc., a HorneNee company.  While we’ll continue to use the tried-and-true HN brand for our more <ahem> innovative projects, we felt it was time for a makeover*.

Our new theme comes from one of the dumbest pre-xhtml tricks in the web designer’s sling: the legendary “blink” tag, which, when used to surround a block of text, makes it flash on and off (seriously).  While we generally look down down our noses at such gimmickry, we thought the name was kind of catchy, and kept with the sense of humor and freshness we brought to the HorneNee brand.

What’s Different: well, nothing, really, except our clients can use our logo without making old ladies blush.  Also, we’re concentrating on promoting our new image at Blnktag.com, so if you follow our blog or want to check in with us once in awhile, that’s the better place to start.

It’s been a good run, but it’s time to grow up (just a little).

* Actually, a client wanted us to change our name before we put it on their website.

Horne Nee Inc was invited to beta test Xpenser and Freshbooks integration. This was enough to get us mentioned in a press release. I’ll be watching for more interesting freshbooks mashups and other services that will streamline our operations.

Yesterday while reading techcrunch, I read about crossloop, an application that lets you access PCs remotely. I’ve used a variety of products in the genre before and routinely use VNC. However, for helping a customer remotely without requiring any prior setup or firewall configuration, Crossloop is great. Its easy for a non-technical client to install and within seconds you can be walking them through a web-based admin panel, or in our case setting up a network printer in San Francisco from Minneapolis (yes, Horne Nee Inc does hardware support for some of our clients).

I’ll be using crossloop for many things from now on. Instead of writing lengthy how-to emails, it will likely be easier to show a client via crossloop how to post on wordpress or send a letter via phplist. Currently it only runs on PCs, hopefully they will release a Mac version at some point.

Facebook launched a new advertising platform that could change the face of online advertising. They now provide a slick interface for businesses, products and public figures to promote themselves without wedging themselves into a profile meant for an individual. I tried my hand at creating a “product” page for the HorneNee Inc Brand. You too can be a fan of HorneNee if you’d like. Along with HorneNee Inc, I added TechCrunch, Google Maps and the New York Times to my “I’m a fan of” section on my profile.

Facebook can be a pretty effective way to promote a business and I could see creating product pages, applications and Facebook ad campaigns for some of our clients.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5860023902

While we haven’t found a single web application that completely replaces quickbooks, we use freshbooks.com for billing and xpenser.com to track our expenses.  Xpenser provides an extremely simple and streamlined interface that works via email, SMS, IM or voice (using jott.com).  We’re still learning about all its awesome features, and hope to use it a lot to record small expenses while we’re off on a crazy project.  More on this later.

One of the many web applications we use at Horne Nee Inc is freshbooks. Its a great web application for tracking time, creating invoices and managing those invoices. They can even print and mail invoices on our behalf. Using freshbooks, we’ve got a lot more time to work on client projects and spend less time dealing with billing.

Recently, the Ontario based freshbooks team was in San Francisco for a conference and called Preston to invite us to dinner. They took us to Espetus, a great Brazilian restaurant near our office. We talked a bit about freshbooks but also about tech issues and more. We ended by taking them for a round of beers at Zeitgeist, which according to Sunir, is their new favorite bar in San Francisco.

If you have a web app and are coming to San Francisco and would like to take us out to dinner, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We founded Horne Nee Inc (a California Corporation) this summer and slowly transitioned our various consulting projects to the new company. Horne Nee Inc now handles the web development, transportation planning and photography projects for both Brendan and Jed.

We’ve been so busy working on websites for clients that its taken a while to develop our own. Prior to starting Horne Nee Inc, Brendan operated under the names Nee Consulting and Brilliant Design. Both of these domain names now point to our new company, Horne Nee Inc. Picturethecity.com, Brendan’s photo site is still a separate site.

We’re still not settled on the logo, but the current one will do for now.