Website Launches Archives

I’m pleased to announce the launch of Best Buy Idea X, a website where you can share, vote for, and discuss ideas that will help make Best Buy a better company. The site is built using Ruby on Rails and runs in Amazon’s Compute Cloud.

We’re far from done with the site. There is already a list of 20+ new features and enhancements that we will be developing over the next 12 months. If you have any feedback or great ideas for the site feel free to let me know. Or, better yet, post an idea in Idea X itself and let the community decide if it’s a good one.

Thanks to Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt at Best Buy for being the muscle behind this project, Barry Judge for executive support, and to my team for kicking ass – Paul Cantrell, McClain Looney, Eric Grossnickle, and Andrew Bessler.

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the website for the St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children, a New York City-based network of hospitals and rehabilitation centers aimed at helping children from around the world in need of world-class medical and educational attention. Bust Out Solutions was brought in to design and engineer a site that would totally replace the existing site with one that is more attractive, easier to navigate, and much easier to maintain by non-technical staff.

We set the client up with a portfolio of great tools, including Radiant CMS, Mailchimp, Vimeo, and WordPress, along with custom engineering and a totally custom design.

Thanks to Tor, Eric, and Matt for their work on the site, and thanks to the folks at St. Mary’s including Josh, Leslie, Jennifer, and Jan for making this site a success.

I’m pleased to announce the re-launch of Giftag, the universal wish list where you can pick anything from any website and share your wish lists with your friends. Giftag is a Best Buy project that started off as a prototype in Drupal. I had the pleasure of joining the team to help re-platform the application onto Django on Google AppEngine. Along with Gary, Steve B, Curt, Thomas, Nick, Jerry, Steve P, and Sean, we successfully launched the new version of the application just in time for the holiday shopping season!

Check it out, let me know what you think, and have fun. It’s very much an evolving application, so user feedback is more than welcome. We like it, and we think it has a lot of potential.

Bust Out Solutions has had the pleasure of maintaining a strong partnership with Play, one of the top branding and design boutiques in the Twin Cities. We recently launched their newly self-designed website, powered by a dynamically generated portfolio and an integrated content management system for easy updates. Check it out and try not to drool too much over the pretty pictures.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of rubinsteinphoto.com. Sara Rubinstein is a commercial photographer based in Minneapolis who now has a kickin’ website. The site has some sick and crazy JavaScript thanks to Bust Out partner Ted Chen, who used the Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries to create the image transition effect. Check out the site, enjoy some sweet photos, and if you’re feeling particularly nerdy, take a long look at portfolio.js.